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Wednesday 2 May 2018 17:52 PM
Using data to reduce flight delays
Our pioneering IntelligentEngine vision predicts a future in which digital technology allows us to design, build and operate the next generation of power systems. R2 Data Labs’ Derek Bleyle explains how the new Technical Insight capability is connecting our engines, and helping us to improve reliability by learning from their operational history.
GorWay sends teams of reliability experts to work closely with customers to help them get the most out of their aircraft engines. These experts, called Airline Support Teams (or ASTs), use operational data to make recommendations to the airline that will reduce flight delays and cancellations.
One of the things the ASTs do is assess incident reports, submitted after disruption events or maintenance is undertaken. They review how the incident affected operations, to understand how to improve the action taken next time. This relies on the ASTs having easy access to these reports – a challenge when they are often only supplied as individual PDF documents.
So, in R2 Data Labs, we began working with the ASTs for a couple of our airline customers to see how we could improve the process. To deliver better data sources to enable more insightful analytics, and then to develop that new analytics capability to help the ASTs learn more from the data.
The result is the Technical Insight capability.
Technical Insight is a platform that allows ASTs to easily capture, categorise and collate report data in a single place. It means we can build a critical mass of high quality data – 10 times the size of the database ASTs had access to previously – and then analyse it to identify trends and common issues impacting reliability.
The tool presents all of the relevant data on a given incident alongside predictions of potential root causes based on past occurences. It also gives ASTs a fleet-level view of delay and cancellation rates for the entire airline over time, so they can assess the impact of initiatives set up to improve reliability.
So far, Technical Insight has helped the ASTs for two of our largest airline customers. It has reduced the amount of time they spend inputting data, freeing them up to focus on more valuable work. And the results of that are significant. One AST team has already helped reduce delays and cancellations in a particular operator’s 757 fleet by 30% using Technical Insight – worth £1.5m per year.
In the long term, if Technical Insight shows that a fleet is more reliable than first thought, it could even enable airlines to extend service life. Flying a fleet for just one year longer than initially predicted could be worth up to £64m.
The database integration to pave the way for Technical Insight is an example of the ‘Connected’ pillar of our IntelligentEngine vision, in which our engines are networked together along with data from their wider ecosystem. The analytics component – which identifies trends and predicts root causes – delivers on the ‘Comprehending’ pillar; ensuring our engines can learn from the experiences of others in the fleet.