EasyJet (UK) has signed a 5-year agreement with Airbus for the latter’s Skywise Predictive Maintenance services for its entire fleet, currently totalling 298 A320 aircraft.
The technology relies on Airbus’s Skywise data platform, which the European manufacturer says will allow the airline’s engineers to intervene early and replace parts before a component’s failure.
The carrier itself says it has been working to reduce the number of delays caused by technical issues from 10 per 1,000 flights since 2010 to just over three per 1,000 flights today on its newest aircraft.
The success of an initial trial conducted over the past three years using Skywise has helped it achieve this improvement in performance. According to easyJet, the initial focus of the Skywise trial was on just three specific technical issues on 85 aircraft in its fleet. Skywise predicted 31 technical failures, which enabled it to remove components before any fault occurred.
“This meant that at least 31 flights – which would have carried more than 4,400 passengers – operated on schedule that would otherwise have been disrupted. Had the fault occurred at a remote airport, the delay could have led to an overnight delay and knock-on delays on other flights,” says the airline.
The avoidance of such delays also has a financial benefit for an airline, avoiding instances where it would have had to pay compensation to passengers.
Skywise can now analyse data from other components on easyJet’s aircraft thanks to the installation of Airbus’s newly released flight operations and maintenance exchanger FOMAX, which it says collects 60 times more data than existing systems. The new equipment will be fitted on the low-fare carrier’s fleet by summer next year. This will allow the operator to recover around 800 gigabytes of data from up to 24,000 different parameters annually.
Reduced delays
CEO Johan Lundgren said: “easyJet is leading the industry in using data and artificial intelligence to improve our efficiency as well as in other parts of the airline where its use can reduce costs, improve customer satisfaction and increase revenue. Our investment in the Skywise platform can really make a tangible difference for thousands of passengers by harnessing the power of big data to reduce delays. It will transform the way that we maintain and operate our aircraft with the long term aim of eliminating delays due to technical faults.”
Tom Enders, Airbus chief executive, said the trial of Skywise with the airline over the past three years “has been tremendously successful, demonstrating significant gains in operational performance through predictive maintenance. We are delighted to further cement our collaboration by extending this trail-blazing technology to easyJet’s entire A320 family fleet.”
The Skywise aviation data platform was launched at last year’s Paris Airshow in collaboration with big data and analytics specialist Palantir Technologies. Earlier this year around 1,000 aircraft were confirmed as being planned for connection, with Airbus saying it is aiming for Skywise “to become the platform of reference used by all major aviation players to improve their operational performance and business results and to support their own digital transformation.”
