Newer Planes Are Providing Airlines a Trove of Useful Data

With few flights and even fewer passengers, the coronavirus pandemic unleashed a wave of challenges for airlines. Some have gone out of business and others are barely surviving as global passenger volume hovers at around 50 percent of 2019 levels.

Without passengers to fill them, airlines have been retiring their older aircraft faster than normal. The more than 1,400 planes airplanes parked in 2020 that might not return to service is more than twice as many aircraft as would customarily be retired in a single year, according to a 10-year aviation forecast by the business consulting firm, Oliver Wyman. The result will a more modern fleet, the report states.

In a glass-is-half-full observation, David Marty, head of digital solutions marketing at Airbus, noted that planes remaining in airlines’ fleets are younger, more fuel-efficient aircraft, with lower carbon dioxide emissions.
New engine technology and lighter structures and components let the Boeing 787 and the Airbus A350 burn 20 to 25 percent less fuel than the planes they replace, according to the manufacturers.
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The newest Airbus airliner, the A350, records 800 megabytes of data from the plane per flight.Credit…Odd Andersen/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

The other significant change is digital. Each new generation of aircraft can collect more data with sensors and circuitry that — like a giant Fitbit — tracks the airplane’s health from nose to tail.
On any particular flight, for example, an airline can calculate how much carbon it is emitting and what plane components may need attention on arrival.

As the percentage of modern aircraft in airline fleets increases, the amount of data available will increase as well. And the airplane is just one contributor to the growing flow of information.

“The world is clearly changing and airplanes are definitely providing more and more information,” said Vincent Capezzuto, chief technology officer for Aireon, an aircraft tracking and surveillance company. New broadcast tracking signals are flight specific but can also contribute information useful for air navigation services and airport arrival planning to help manage the flow of traffic in the air and at airports.

In one novel use, Aireon has been hired by the F.A.A. to monitor all Boeing 737 Max flights to capture any anomalies for analysis. This is in response to the nearly two-year grounding of the Max following two deadly crashes. The Max returned to service at the end of 2020. (Some of the planes were grounded again this month because of a potential electrical problem .)
To show how fast change has come, Kevin Michaels, the managing director of AeroDynamic Advisory, an aerospace consultancy, points to the newest Airbus airliner, the A350. It typically records 800 megabytes of data per flight. The Airbus A380, the world’s largest passenger airliner, which began operation in 2007, can provide only half of that.

“There’s a lot more data available and better algorithms,” Mr. Michaels said.

At Delta Air Lines, new technology has led the airline to create apps pilots use on a tablet like Flight Weather Viewer to avoid flying through turbulence. It was first launched in 2016 and updated over the years as new capabilities became available.

Its Flight Family Communication app, started in 2018, lets all employees working on a specific flight communicate among themselves, from ground crews to flight crews.