British Airways is introducing an engineering system that uses real-time data to predict aircraft maintenance issues. The E-Logs platform will provide live performance information to the operations team about all of the airline’s 270 aircraft, allowing them to spot potential problems immediately and proactively fix them – reducing the risk of aircraft downtime and flight delays.
E-Logs is being brought in to replace a costly and time-consuming paper-based system for aircraft technical logs, which are a regulatory requirement. With the outgoing system, flight crew and cabin crew logged any faults in writing, with the logs then transcribed and transferred to maintenance teams, which then carry out any required work – and again update the aircraft maintenance log in writing.
The entirely automated process makes it much easier for pilots and cabin crew to log issues, and British Airways estimates it will save the use of more than 900,000 pieces of paper per year. With the E-Logs system, a number of iPads with specialist software installed will be available in every aircraft in the fleet, replacing the paper-based system entirely and allowing the immediate transfer of data from the aircraft to engineers within seconds. As they will now have knowledge of faults before the aircraft arrives at its destination (anything from an engine issue to a faulty IFE display or galley catch), this means that the engineering team can pre-order any required parts and resolve issues more quickly on arrival, reducing the amount of time planes are out of action.
The technology also allows the airline to predict faults and pre-emptively correct them before they become an issue that might take an aircraft offline.
The system forms part of British Airways’ £7 billion (US$8.79 bn) ‘transformation investment’ over the next two years, which is an investment to revolutionise how its teams work, including the latest technology to boost the customer experience. This technology includes cutting-edge machine learning, automation and AI across the operation, driving improvements from bookings to baggage handling and helping reduce cancellations and delays.
