48 AUSTRALIAN AVIATION
and venture capitalist investment in
IoT startups will fuel competition and
innovation across the IoT toolchain,”
concurs Pratt & Whitney’s Sean
Pearson, highlighting that “IoT growth
is driven by business and technological
factors, decreasing costs of sensors and
increasing capabilities of various tech,
such as network bandwidth, cloud
services and machine learning.”
SITAONAIR statistics suggest
that more than two thirds of airlines
are currently planning to invest to
increase their adoption of IoT in the
future.
“This is overdue and represents
a huge business opportunity,” says
Equinix’ Gareth Bridges. “The data-
driven optimisation of traditional
processes not only makes for improved
safety and security, it delivers
economic efficiencies for business
- not to mention that it aligns with
customers’ shifting expectations.”
Already, the IoT generates more infor-
mation than the industry can use
Early generations of sensor-enabled
aircraft are already generating more
data than airlines, their suppliers,
manufacturers and the rest of the
industry are using, yet finding a single
‘killer app’ has proven elusive.
Currently, says Virgin Australia’s
Stone, “IoT is allowing for the aviation
community to enhance the customer
experience by eliminating the
frictions associated with flying. Each
opportunity to utilise IoT solutions
is attached to addressing a business
problem where the technology is
really a secondary consideration.
Virgin Australia has a number of
areas that are looking at using IoT
elements to improve the customer
experience throughout their journey,
like the ability to check flight status
information using Amazon Alexa.”
Yet challenges unique to aviation
certainly remain.
“For some of our operational areas,
power to IoT devices poses an issue
so we are looking at some innovative
solutions that will increase battery life
on beacons and sensors that would
make their use more practical,” Stone
says.
SITAONAIR’s Pierre-Yves Benain
agrees. “The big and understandable
barrier to adopting IoT onboard
aircraft has been the need to gather
certifications before any new
technologies can be deployed. For
SITAONAIR, we believe industry
collaboration, and the creation of
open, certified platforms, will be the
key to unlocking widespread certified
IoT adoption, and its associated
benefits.”
It’s also crucial to understand the
context of aviation’s disparate, often
bespoke, frequently outsourced,
and sometimes difficult to update
IT backbones — many of which are
controlled by data warehousing
players. Joining up these disparate
systems, which often use different
languages, is a tall order.
Commercial powerplant
manufacturers are, however,
demonstrating that it can be done
already, Rolls-Royce’s O’Sullivan
remindsAustralian Aviation.
“Intensive analytics is carried out
on data collected from sensors on
engines which are then transmitted
to Rolls-Royce Aircraft Availability
Centres across the globe using a
combination of online and offline
transmission techniques. With
advanced data sciences, Rolls-Royce
uses diagnostic analytics to determine
usage patterns, provides predictive
analytics as insight to determine
engine life and also provides
prescriptive analytics as foresight to
control the engine usage.
“Airlines who have implemented
our predictive and prescriptive
analytics solutions are able to continue
to keep the engines on-wing longer
safely and reduce aircraft on-ground
situations.”
As airline operations and
management functions become more
data-driven and more connected,
manufacturers and service providersare creating new sets of tools that
can be integrated in existing ops
centres and management information
systems. General aviation operators,
too, have new suites of applications
where they can customise notifications
for their individual operational needs.
Automating these processes,
creating reports that are usable, and
translating them between operational
and technical specialties, is already
showing promise for Rolls-Royce,
which launched its Intelligent Insights
suite earlier this year. “The first
element to be launched is Technical
Insight, which benefits both airline
technical services teams and Rolls-
Royce service delivery specialists as
they strive for ever-improved dispatch
reliability,” explains O’Sullivan.
“It automates the application of
Natural Language techniques to
process engine maintenance log data,
unlocking the potential for a step
change in delay and cancellation
performance. This data is connected
with other relevant parameters in the
Cloud, and insights are then delivered
via visualisation tools for the line
maintenance environment in an easy-
to-use app, and via the Rolls-Royce
Care portal.”
Yet SITAONAIR’s Belain is
clear that aviation is only starting
to unlock the power of the IoT.
“There are many concepts and trials
underway at the moment. We see the
biggest growth area in the space being
in how the data-value potential of IoT
is realised.”‘Alexa, when
will VH-OJA
require engine
maintenance?’
Pratt & Whitney says IoT
growth is driven by business
and technological factors,
decreasing costs of sensors
and increasing capabilities of
various tech, such as network
bandwidth, cloud services and
machine learning.PRATT & WHITNEY