ALTEN in Aeronautics: latest-generation predictive maintenance

12th June 2019

A plane’s place is in the sky, not on the ground due to unexpected breakdowns. Skywise, Airbus’ big data platform, gathers service data from thousands of planes to improve operations. ALTEN is supporting Airbus with the project, helping the company come up with a process for developing algorithms to predict breakdowns.

There’s no magic in predictive maintenance. The discipline is based on gathering and analyzing data to detect situations that are likely to result in breakdowns. For the part of this Airbus project assigned to ALTEN, aeronautics engineers and data scientists are working together to analyze testing and service data recovered from flight recorders. The goal is to extract value from the information through algorithms capable of predicting breakdowns. The project draws on know-how in aeronautics and aeronautics maintenance and big data (gathering, analyzing, and visualizing data).

The Skywise platform was created by Airbus to deliver a service to airlines.
Skywise Predictive Maintenance (SPM) will transform a portion of airlines’ unscheduled maintenance and, in the process, boost passenger satisfaction and reduce costs. The platform also brings Airbus big data capabilities that will be used within the company. It will be integrated into a data environment that will support the company’s data continuity. Once the algorithm is in place, SPM will not require any human intervention. It will automatically analyze flight conditions and, if necessary, generate an alert and recommended maintenance to the user airline.

ALTEN started working on predictive maintenance back in 2016, well before Skywise. For the Skywise project, ALTEN sent engineers to Airbus to ensure the most agile communication possible with project stakeholders, working end-to-end with other ALTEN engineering departments in France, the UK, Germany, and Spain in charge of designing the data recording systems (ACMS, Aircraft Data Collection, and FOMAX, the cornerstones of the platform). Skywise is garnering interest from increasing numbers of airlines, and the sales outlook is promising.