How Aircraft Predictive Maintenance Saves Millions of Lives & Dollars

On November 4th, 2010, Qantas Flight 32, en route from Singapore to Sydney, experienced a near-catastrophe. One of the engines failed due to the disintegration of a faulty turbine disc, putting the lives of everyone on board at risk. Luckily, the pilot managed an emergency landing, and no one was hurt. This is an example of what predictive maintenance can help airlines avoid.

While traditional or reactive maintenance is an effective part of the aviation industry, it involves a high level of risk and financial costs. On the other hand, predictive maintenance is a proactive approach that analyzes real-time data to anticipate potential issues and sets maintenance schedules to fix them. This advanced method helps airlines increase operational efficiency and passenger safety while achieving maintenance cost reduction.

Find out how predictive maintenance is revolutionizing the aviation industry by saving millions of lives and billions of dollars.

Aircraft Maintenance: Reactive Vs. Preventive Vs. Predictive

To fully capture the significance and meaning of predictive maintenance, a comparison with other methods needs to be done.

Reactive

This traditional method is pretty simple; parts and equipment get repaired after breaking down or running to the point of failure. While the advantage of utilizing an asset to its maximum potential might sound appealing, it’s not the best option.

The cost of reactive maintenance often exceeds the production value of running an asset until failure. Furthermore, as parts begin to vibrate, overheat, and break, additional machine damage can occur, potentially resulting in further costly repairs. Not only is it sometimes costly to wait for parts to break down, but it’s also extremely dangerous, as the Qantas Flight 32 incident clearly shows.

Preventive

Also known as planned maintenance, preventive maintenance is a set of tasks performed while the equipment is under normal operations, avoiding unexpected breakdowns and their associated challenges. This method relies on taking assets offline at a specific time to perform repairs.

Preventive maintenance tasks like running tests or lubricating and cleaning certain components are aimed at increasing asset productivity and longevity while reducing repair costs. However, this approach requires increased aircraft downtime, as seemingly functional machines are taken offline and operations are disrupted.

Predictive

Advances in technology have enabled the implementation of predictive maintenance. This proactive approach relies on data from sensors that monitor asset performance during operations to predict failure and plan repairs. It’s an advantage that allows predictive maintenance to correct issues before failures occur.

Rather than running a part to failure or replacing it when it still has more to offer solely based on protocols, predictive methods allow airlines to optimize their strategies by conducting maintenance only when it’s completely necessary. In return, this maximizes operational efficiency and avoids potential failures and unplanned downtime.

The Impact of Predictive Maintenance on Flight Planning & Fueling

Flight Planning

Aircraft predictive maintenance offers a better understanding of aircraft availability, allowing airlines to enhance their flight plans. Knowing when repairs should be made and the duration of each plane’s downtime minimizes disruptions to flight schedules caused by unexpected component and equipment failures. With fewer emergency repairs, delays, and cancellations, airlines can conduct accurate flight planning with more precision and less surprise.

Aviation Fueling

Flight service providers can further optimize aviation fueling operations by leveraging predictive maintenance. Specialized algorithms continuously monitor aircraft systems to identify potential issues that may impact fuel consumption and work on solutions to solve them. It offers airlines the ability to estimate fuel more accurately, minimize the risk of fuel shortages during flights, and reduce the need for costly emergency refueling stops.

Why Predictive Maintenance is Crucial for Airlines

Repairs are inevitable in the aviation industry, but airlines always look for strategies to ensure the safety of aircraft and passengers, cut down on costs, and achieve customer satisfaction. Here’s why predictive maintenance checks off these marks and more:

Significant Cost Reduction

• Avoid Costly Emergency Repairs: Emergency repairs and unscheduled maintenance lead to increased aircraft downtime, costing airlines significant amounts of money each year. Predictive maintenance allows airlines to know when to make repairs and how long they take. This way, airlines can avoid major failures, flight disruptions, and the heavy costs they entail.
• Extend Component Lifespan: Unlike preventive maintenance, which may replace a functioning asset, predictive maintenance makes repairs based on the actual wear and tear of a component. By doing so, airlines can extend the lifespan of critical components like engines and landing gear, reducing the need for expensive replacements and utilizing components to their full potential.

Enhanced Operational Efficiency

• Reduce Flight Delays & Cancellations: Discovering last-minute maintenance issues may ground a flight for several hours or even cancel it altogether. These delays or cancellations are not only costly in terms of money but also reputation, as dissatisfied customers will think twice before flying the airline again. However, approaching maintenance proactively can significantly minimize these issues and leave little room for surprise. For instance, predicting the need for a component replacement during a scheduled layover minimizes disruption to flight schedules and passenger itineraries.
• Optimize Aircraft Utilization: Again, predicting when an airplane needs fixing and scheduling repairs helps airlines organize their operations and use their fleet accordingly.  This means aircraft will have less time on the ground and more in the air, maximizing the number of flights and revenue generation.

Data-Driven Decision Making

• Refine Maintenance Strategies: Predictive maintenance is all about collecting relevant and real-time data. Maintenance records allow airlines to analyze certain breakdown patterns and develop more effective strategies to address them. For example, if engine vibrations frequently occur after a certain number of flight hours, preventive maintenance checks can be scheduled accordingly, reducing the risk of major engine problems.
• Employ The Right People & Parts At The Right Time: Instead of dealing with wastefully stockpiled parts or manpower shortages when emergencies occur, professional flight service providers utilize predictive maintenance data to ensure they have the right personnel and necessary spare parts available exactly when needed.

Saving Lives

• Prevent Catastrophic Events: After all, the aviation industry always prioritizes safety above all else. Predictive maintenance solutions enable airlines to steer clear of dangerous events like engine shutdowns mid-flight. For example, vibration analysis detects early signs of wear and tear and allows maintenance teams to schedule a proactive overhaul, avoiding a potentially dangerous in-flight emergency.
• Minimize In-flight Emergencies: Early detection of issues like hydraulic fluid leaks or tire pressure abnormalities through sensor data allows for immediate ground inspections and repairs, significantly reducing the risk of in-flight emergencies and ensuring passenger safety.