Aerospace is a technology-driven discipline which has largely been locked into archaic maintenance practices and technologies, practices which are largely unchanged over the course of the last six or seven decades. Visual inspections on aircraft which are roughly the length of a football field can take hours, and it is impossible to fully inspect the surface of the aircraft.
Like any industry, those in the aviation industry must adapt and improve every year to remain competitive, help passengers travel safely, increase profits, and streamline manufacturing and operations. However, as our society becomes more digitized in the 21st century, stakeholders in the industry must continue to adapt with them. You may use some of this technology today, but we believe some of the tips below will become more mainstream in the year to come.
Aircraft tugs are real modern marvels, moving aircraft weight hundreds of tons all day, every day. These movements come with very real risks every single time, and we are going to look at those now.
Remotely operated and autonomous ground support equipment (GSE), particularly aircraft tugs, represent a valuable alternative to traditional units. Military users have long been users of traditional GSE, but does this hamper operational requirements and demands?
Whatever is accurate or inaccurate regarding fuel consumption and carbon footprints, a shift away from fossil fuels towards electrical power generation, whether total electrical power generation or hybrid power, is inevitable.
Bitcoin. Ethereum. Litecoin. Cryptocurrencies have taken the global economy by storm over the past decade. But they are far from anything to do with aviation, right? Especially support equipment? Well, this is proving to be an altogether incorrect assumption; the technology which powers and secures cryptocurrencies is proving to be very versatile evolving technology for all sorts of ventures. For the sake of aircraft ground support equipment owners, particularly those with a fleet of GSE.
We have all likely heard of the comparative cost of preventative maintenance versus equipment failure from neglect, but what do the actual numbers look like?
“Big Data” is fast becoming a stalwart buzzword of the 21st century business lexicon, yet how many who casually toss it around have a strong grasp for exactly what it is and does, and can offer? In a watered-down nutshell, big data is the process of sifting through enormous quantities of raw data and identifying often subtle trends, like indicators of failure. But how exactly is Big Data positively impacting fleet maintenance today? Is it farfetched and futuristic, or does it provide actionable intelligence right now?
Aircraft ground support equipment are pieces of machinery which are designed for specific purposes and do those things generally very well. However, after certain periods of time or due to advances in technology, that machinery becomes outdated or even obsolete. Believe it or not, GSE can impact aircraft operations significantly, both good and bad. Since GSE items are costly, you need to come up with a plan to update your fleet in a way which best supports your operation.
Predictive analytics in data analytics has proven to be a game changer in retail. It allows retailers to fine tune marketing strategies to almost unbelievable levels of accuracy, drilling down precisely what consumers are most likely to purchase and when.
But this only begins to scratch the surface of data analysis and analytics – predictive analytics, often used to determine customer behaviors, is also proving capable of predicting future events to include equipment failure. This sort of behavioral analysis is remarkable and directly useful to predicting change, breakage, and failure in just about any industry to include aviation equipment, both aircraft as well as ground equipment.
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