by Angela Guess
Christopher Koch recently reported for Forbes that the airline industry may be able to benefit greatly from Big Data. He explains, “Turns out that airlines are essentially flying blind when it comes to keeping their expensive planes in the air. As passengers, we all have an arsenal of war stories of being trapped on the tarmac due to a ‘maintenance issue.’ It’s little wonder that airlines are tied with newspapers for the lowest customer satisfaction score among 47 industries tracked by the American Customer Satisfaction Index. Inefficient operations are more than a customer service nightmare. Air carriers lose a whopping $10,000 for every hour spent on the ground performing maintenance, repair, and overhaul (MRO). That inevitably shows up as checked baggage fees or pay-for-your-peanuts policies that further aggravate the flying public. Even more importantly, inefficient maintenance operations create safety hazards.”
He continues, “What’s needed is a way to gather all the data coming from the ground and the air together and keep it fresh—not just for individual aircraft but for the entire fleet. If airlines had access to all that data at once, maintenance planning could happen in real-time. For example, a maintenance planner could download a defect notification from a plane as it occurs and have the maintenance crew and replacement parts ready by the time the plane pulls up to the gate. Even better, airlines could eventually use the data to predict and take action before the problem occurs.”
