The hot topic of data-sharing was a key discussion point during the FlightGlobal forecast session held at Aircraft Interiors Expo today, which examined predictive maintenance and the connected aircraft.
While competition among analytics providers is seen as important, Lufthansa Technik's senior director of analytics and data solutions Jan Stoevesand warns that airlines mustn't lose governance of their data.
"What I fear are data monopolies and airlines not being in control of their data any more. We have to make sure that we separate between data generation/acquisition, and data usage," says Stoevesand. "If we separate these two worlds by say Chinese walls, this will help the whole industry get better at solutions for safer, cheaper and more reliable airlines."
He points to the way that airlines have managed to share flight-safety data as a possible approach to other data-sharing opportunities.
"We need to come up with a format that will allow us to mimic what we've been able to achieve with flight-safety [data]," he says. "That will be able to share some of the data we have, but I do believe that some of it will be kept with the airline and not shared."
Stoevesand adds that the fleet of older airliners still flying with only limited technology supporting predictive maintenance is large enough to justify examining retrofit options.
"Everyone is excited about these new digital aircraft. But we have a legacy fleet which will be there for the next 10-15 years, and it is probably these aircraft that benefit more from predictive maintenance and data analytics, rather than the modern aircraft. So there is a business case to look for retrofit solutions [for the legacy fleet]," he says.
Get all the coverage from Aircraft Interiors on our dedicated event page
Source: Cirium Dashboard
