Data-Driven MRO Service

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MAINTENANCE, REPAIR & OVERHAUL

Honeywell Gets First Airline For Data-Driven MRO Service

Chinese Carrier Hainan Airlines becomes the first carrier in the world to sign up for Honeywell’s GoDirect Maintenance Service program.

Chris Kjelgaard | May 19, 2017

HNA Group subsidiary Hainan Airlines will become the first airline to use Honeywell's GoDirect Maintenance Service program, which Honeywell has designed to use connectivity and data analytics to improve maintenance operations and reduce equipment downtime.

Under the terms of the agreement, Hainan Airlines and its subsidiary carriers will outfit more than 50 Airbus A330s with Honeywell's Connected Auxiliary Power Unit (APU) predictive-maintenance service.

Hainan Airlines itself operates 22 of the A330s involved, with its subsidiaries Hong Kong Airlines, Lucky Air, Tianjin Airlines and Beijing Capital Airlines operating the rest.

According to Honeywell, its Connected APU service will improve the fleet availability of the HNA Group carriers by identifying potential mechanical issues or failures in their A330s' APUs before they happen.

Honeywell will also outfit more than 40 additional A330s ordered by HNA Group with its GoDirect Maintenance Service, taking to more than 90 the number of HNA Group-owned A330s which will eventually have Honeywell's Connected APU capability.

The Honeywell 331-350C is the sole-source APU for all Airbus A330s.

Honeywell's Connected APU service works by using an existing data connection on the aircraft to download APU maintenance and fault data to airline maintenance departments, so that they can predict impending hardware failures.

According to Honeywell, hardware failures are routinely the highest cause of APU interruptions.

All this fault data is then shared with Honeywell, which for the HNA Group carriers will analyze the data for fault trends before presenting the resulting findings to Hainan Airlines' maintenance department in an easy-to-understand, visual manner. The data will identify the maintenance action required to fix the APU and avoid an unscheduled maintenance event.

“We are committed to providing our customers with our unique five-star in-flight experience, whether that's the 'eastern-style' services available or an on-time departure to one of our global locations,” says Xie Haoming, chairman of Hainan Airlines. “Honeywell's GoDirect Maintenance Service helps us maintain this commitment by reducing APU downtime, keeping our planes in the air more often to do what we need them to do, which is getting passengers to their destinations safely and on time.”

“The business and passenger impact of Honeywell's Connected APU service for Hainan Airlines is significant. Not only will the airline receive better and more predictive maintenance services that will reduce mechanical delays and cancellations, it will also improve first-time fix rate, reduce false removals and improve passenger experience,” says Brian Davis, vice president, airlines, Asia Pacific for Honeywell Aerospace.

According to Honeywell, existing trials of its predictive-maintenance services have demonstrated a 35% reduction in inoperative equipment and a significant reduction in operational disruptions, while producing a false-positive rate of less than 1%.