Industry Insight Special Report
Honeywell’s Connected Aircraft
February 1st 2018
Making data available to pilots as well as operators and manufacturers helps improve their overall situational awareness, safety and efficiency in the face of busy traffic and inclement weather. Read More » “There is an incredible amount of growth opportunities for ASEAN to boost its economy through a booming aviation industry as it strives to facilitate a more integrated airspace among the member countries,” Vice President, Airlines, Asia Pacific, Honeywell Aerospace & Aerospace Leader, Honeywell International Sdn Bhd, Brian Davis, told Orient Aviation.
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The Honeywell Connected Aircraft aspires to cover every aspect of connectivity for cockpit and cabin within one data pipe, with services under the GoDirect product line in flight planning, maintenance and equipment protection plans. “This app-based approach enables operators and pilots to access real-time data, thereby increasing efficiency and productivity,” Davis said.
Maintenance is a key service offering where Honeywell offers tangible cost savings through analytics. In 2017, Cathay Pacific and Hainan Airlines signed up for the GoDirect Connected Maintenance APU service, which combines connectivity, product knowledge and data analytics to predict when mechanical parts need to be fixed or replaced. Cathay’s trial reduced inoperative systems by up to 35%, saved several hundred thousand dollars in operational and reactive maintenance costs per aircraft and reduced APU-related delay minutes by 51%.
Honeywell will outfit more than 60 of Cathay’s and Cathay Dragon’s A330s with GoDirect Connected Maintenance and the Hong Kong airline group is considering extending the service to its fleet of B777s. Hainan Airlines’ current fleet of more than 50 Airbus A330s and its future fleet of more than 40 A330s will also be outfitted with the service.
“During the Singapore Airshow, we will be announcing a number of large and important contract wins involving our APU and maintenance services with major premium and low-cost carriers in ASEAN,” said Davis.
Honeywell’s JetWave satellite communications hardware, which operates on Inmarsat’s Global Xpress Ka-band network, has also been selected by Singapore Airlines, Qatar Airways, Vietnam Airlines, Sri Lankan Airlines, Air New Zealand and Air Astana.
| Boeing AnalytX at work A B777 departed from the U.S. interior bound for its European hub. Less than an hour into its nine-hour flight, the airplane sent an Airplane Health Management (AHM) alert to its maintenance control centre indicating low tire pressure, a potentially serious issue which can result in tire failure upon landing and damage to the flaps to the tune of a million dollars. Maintenance control used AHM tire pressure reporting to validate the alert. The flight crew was diverted to a maintenance base that was given notice, and a crew was standing by with parts. The tires were replaced and the plane increased airspeed, arriving at its destination within 20 minutes of its original schedule. |
| Airbus Skywise and AirAsia • AirAsia has integrated data from disparate sources on the Skywise platform and developed new capabilities against specific and immediate needs, including time-series analysis of large-scale DataBird sensor data, component reliability and repetitive fault analysis. Key results include: full deployment integrating several years’ worth of AMOS data across all AOCs as well as PFRs; deployment of component reliability, ‘rogue component’ and repetitive-fault applications which will allow reliability and maintenance teams to perform analyses at scale to improve fleet reliability; and continuous training on ‘Quiver’, a Skywise application which allows users to visualise and analyse large-scale sensor data to perform flight-ops analysis, predictive maintenance and troubleshooting. • Skywise enables low-cost carrier, Peach Aviation, to automate the quality monitoring process and produce key metrics grouped by ATA chapter and aircraft in seconds. Reports which used to take days to compile are now made in only a few clicks. For component reliability, another application uses data from the platform to track unscheduled removals over time, run Weibull distributions over the data and determine the optimal replacement schedule. |
