Planes are meant to fly. Not sit in hangars waiting to be serviced or repaired while potential passengers look for other options. Every minute an aircraft spends in a maintenance bay means a lost opportunity to build loyal customers and generate revenue. Airlines estimate that the average cost of an AOG (Aircraft On Ground) event can run anywhere from $10,000 all the way up to $150,000. And that’s just for a single aircraft.
So what’s keeping these aircraft on the ground longer than they have to be? It’s not a lack of skilled maintainers or a scarcity of parts and components. It’s the inefficient and antiquated process of diagnosing the issue and getting the right people and equipment in place to fix it. Right now, airlines have to endure inconvenient fly-along inspections that delay diagnoses and draw out repair times. That means days or, in some cases, weeks of an aircraft literally cooling its jets in a maintenance bay.
Video changed all that.
Reducing AOG Time with Real-Time Video Diagnostics
By incorporating video into their maintenance workflows, airlines are able to compress that clumsy diagnostic process and accelerate their maintenance throughput to get planes back in the air faster. In the simplest expression of this advantage, aircraft crew can send video to the ground team mid-flight. That way, maintainers can stage the parts they need to address the issue before the plane even lands. But that’s just the beginning.
Maintainers can use video to send real-time diagnostic information to the people in the airlines hierarchy who approve repairs and associated costs. In the past, these leaders would have to gather all the data, often from different sources, before studying the information that was available to them and rendering a decision. With video, everything they need to approve a repair request is right before their eyes.
Why Video Outperforms Photos in Aircraft Maintenance
Photographs of aircraft issues have somewhat improved the repair process in recent years, but pictures have their limitations.
Video shows atypical vibrations, unusual movements, and odd sounds that photos can’t duplicate. Maintainers can then diagnose the problem faster and prepare the service bay accordingly. And if there are any off-site specialists who need to be consulted for troubleshooting guidance, airlines no longer have to fly them out to inspect the plane in-person. A live or recorded video will give them all the information they need to assist maintainers in fixing the aircraft.
Accelerating Maintenance Throughput Across MRO Operations
The other big advantage of video is in its ability to accelerate maintenance throughput. If the secret to cutting AOG time is finding and resolving the issue as fast as possible, video is the catalyst that puts the pedal to the metaphorical metal. Video allows MROs (Maintenance, Repair, and Overhauls) to not only speed up the repair process, but to subsequently free up service bays, reduce bottlenecks, and increase the entire operations throughput capacity.
It only stands to reason that reducing AOG for one plane means that the line moves quicker for any other aircraft waiting to be serviced.
Just as any backup has a domino effect on aircraft further down in the queue, speeding up the process makes the whole organization more efficient.
Standardizing Communication and Eliminating Documentation Gaps
Beyond the highly visible time-savings, video streamlines the system behind the scenes. If every maintainer is using the same video platform, there’s no longer any hedging or guessing on the right way to proceed. There’s no missing or vague documentation to gum up the works during maintenance, something that has always been a hindrance to the process. Of course, if everyone is seeing the same video evidence, work can start sooner and finish quicker. And for the people in charge of getting all the parts and people in the right place, video gives them an early indication of exactly who and what is needed to resolve any issue.
Protecting Operational Video with Security and Complaince Controls
If you’re choosing a video platform, make sure you pick one that captures, organizes, and protects operational video and photos with robust access controls and audit trails. With role-based access controls, only authorized personnel can view, share, or download maintenance videos. Your video should also include timestamps, user ID, and device ID to support quality assurance and establish chain-of-custody protocols. You’re also going to want a system that can handle, compress, store large files that are inherent in the aviation industry. With all of those safeguards in place, you’ll eliminate compliance gaps and simultaneously improve maintenance operations.
Keeping Aircraft in the Air with Video Technology
A single aircraft can have thousands of moving parts. Until now, the aircraft maintenance process had nearly as many. While advances in air travel technology make today’s planes complex digital marvels, video is the best way to keep up with those innovations and even outpace them.
To learn more about how airlines can help their planes spend less time on the ground and more in the air, visit our Aviation page, and download our whitepaper: Reducing AOG Time: The Visual Operations Imperative in Aviation Maintenance.
