Professional Pilot, October 2018

The move to share real time data into pools for shared analytics is on its way to workhorse business aircraft Maintenance department Aircraft health monitoring center Shared data and cloud based analytics are convenient for business aviation flight departments A bizjet transmitting system usage information in real time can be serviced immediately upon landing if a failure is detected while enroute to the destination saving the operator time G armin stunned the world with the introduction of its Synthetic Vision System SVS onto the Garmin 1000 flight displays in 2008 The big news was that Garmins SVS was accomplished by just adding new software to the already installed flight displays rather than doing a complete cockpit replacement The conversion trick was planned well in advance and was the beginning of a new era in avionics for the average pilot This trend now has a path into every activity from single aircraft owners to large fleet operators and will soon lead to subscription based software and aircraft connectivity in real time to almost every aeronautical data source on the planet This new 76 PROFESSIONAL PILOT October 2018 technology is commonly referred to as Big Data and is basically the use of software and data generated from thousands of aircraft into a pool of information to identify potential high cost failures in aircraft engines components and navigation systems When trends are adopted in the entire industry the scale of the savings in both money and time is on a grand scale Consider the automotive industry where it is now routine to hear of recall notices to fix or replace critical parts to avoid failures or accidents The insight for this and the reason you hear more and more recalls in the news is because of Big Data which is the concentration of massive amounts of vehicle service life information that then translates to cost and safety The use of this technology in aviation is now being seen in large commercial aircraft fleets today and it brings savings in maintenance and operational costs meaning savings in time and fuel Now expand the idea by adding aircraft systems continuous real time connectivity This shares data from thousands of inflight aircraft with machines conducting analysis to spot potential problems Timely information to you and the condition you may have blundered into translates to a fix or preemptive change that keeps you running For the single aircraft operator or flight department the service you get is information digested for a more efficient and timely game plan Discovering costly problems early Big Data move has a holistic or large scale approach in aviation to discover costly problems early on and really got its start from the commercial transport world and workhorse helicopters communities which place a premium on planning and the ability of providing actionable info to the operator The creation of this technology has also resulted in a new field in aviation turning the outsourced service and expense of a flight department into value for operators who are willing to pay And now there is a competition by the OEMs seeking to provide even more service with each new technology innovation as part of the package when selling a new aircraft The start of database collection Reflecting on the Garmin G1000 and SVS program all of the other competing OEMs saw the aircraft as a collection of databases from the Flight Monitoring System FMS the Primary Flight Display PFD the ra ZERO AOG WITH BIG DATA Todays innovations are about to set a grander tone for the direction of the aviation industry with multiple system databases new functions and crew and maintenance department alerting while you fly By Glenn Connor ATP Cessna 425 President Discover Technology Intl Destination