“Our plane is coming from the hangar…”- nothing struck fear and dread into the hearts of myself and my fellow crewmembers than the utterance of that misfortunate phrase.

Because here’s what that really meant: “Our plane has been in that hangar for about a week and we’ll be lucky if it’s even able to be towed over to us in one piece over the next 3 hours, as the maintenance team struggles to fix all 67 problems on the ride over.”

Or something like that.

Running an airline is incredibly complex- even under ideal conditions. Throw in a snowstorm or a random landing gear malfunction and the ramifications are innumerable; ripple effects that rival that one scene in Jurassic Park.

So, imagine my surprise when I discovered that “Predictive Aircraft Maintenance” is an up-and-coming thing. I’ll chalk it up to being out of the game for a few years, but frankly, this is one of the best things I’ve heard of coming out of the woodwork as staff shortages continue to wage war on smooth operations.

I’m working mostly out of research and assumption here, but with something as large and complex as an airplane, I’m assuming we’re not talking one little “check engine light” fits all in terms of monitoring what needs doing to keep planes in the air.

So, it makes sense that one of the emerging stars in the aviation technology atmosphere is predictive maintenance AKA the robots will save us all through automation.

Airbus has debuted a program called Skywise where data can be transmitted from the actual aircraft and uploaded to a database. Information about the status of various components and overall health of the plane are monitored, and issues can be proactively handled before they become a systematic problem.

Sweet.

This is what I believe the predictive maintenance notification process looks like and you will not convince me otherwise.

We at ELP have always been loud supporters of automation. To us it just makes sense that aircraft maintenance is bettered by the powers of proactivity and simplification.

In an aviation world where staff shortages are still wreaking havoc and both weather events and computer glitches can so easily derail steady operations, having every plane in good health is a key component in maintaining reliability.

But imagine a world where you have both- automation monitoring and protecting your airplanes…while we give you the tools to automate and improve staffing and recover from weather and software issues…wouldn’t that be something?

Interested in learning more? Check out this article:

Predictive Maintenance | Aviation Pros