Safer air travel, more planes on schedule and cost savings were benefits of information technology cited by leading figures in world aviation when they met in Limerick recently. It is not surprising that IT was embraced early and enthusiastically by an industry whose global and safety aspects have always made knowledge-sharing a necessary priority.
Even relatively recently, some questioned the cost benefits, however. "Five years ago, there was a lot of debate about whether IT would deliver productivity," said Richard C. Higgins, a vice president at Boeing. "That's all over. Now it is just a question of how to use it optimally." He was speaking at the Maintenance, Repair and Overhaul (MRO) conference run by Aviation Week magazine at the University of Limerick last month.
Consumer advances in the aviation business - like online booking and electronic ticketing - have received lots of attention, but the quiet computing revolution in the industry may be no less extraordinary. Technology is also, for instance, helping maintenance crews that prepare planes for flight.
Under the old - and still widely used - system, repair crews working to tight deadlines often thumb through massive paper manuals looking for technical information on parts and systems. If they don't have the right manual, or it hasn't been updated recently, they may have to fax or phone the part manufacturer. Worse, some might opt to "wing it" on a repair job.
"Digital technology speeds access to critical information enormously. Now, if a maintenance crew anywhere needs to look up information on a repair, they can access the latest data in seconds or minutes, using search facilities. They're working with accurate, up-to-date information," said Richard Higgins. He added that using paper systems was much slower and more difficult, and emphasised the formidable logistical hassle and expense of updating paper and microfiche manuals around the globe.
The crew's fast access to information also means that planes spend less time under repair and more in the air, saving airlines money. Aircraft suppliers save costs due to fewer customer queries. Passengers get planes that leave on schedule.
Richard Higgins said that the first wave of hard work on IT infrastructure had been done. "It took a long time. Now we are starting to see the benefits . . . It is giving the whole business a lift."
Jon Andresen, from information services at United Airlines, agrees. He has worked for 10 years on the cross-industry SPEC 2000 project that is building standards for exchanging data between aviation companies.
The IT payoff for United Airlines includes a 90 per cent cut in purchasing costs, he said. CEDA and Airinc, two dedicated systems used by almost 1,000 aviation companies, allow transactions to be conducted entirely by computer. Transactions that cost $40 when conducted by people now cost $4, he said.
His overriding passion, however, is the humdrum-sounding drive to barcode all airplane parts. This means more to ordinary flyers than they might think.
Because parts manufacturers, suppliers and buyers now identify each part using separate systems, as Jon Andresen says, "we can lose trace-ability". Without a strong, unified ID system unscrupulous or ignorant dealers could put "bogus parts" into the system, with undesirable results.
When a plane needing a part also needs to take off in an hour, airlines don't always have the time, the diligence, or the option to closely check the origins of the part they locate, he said. We shouldn't be surprised that there are people who "would love to sell you a $50,000 part they stole from somewhere", he said, even a little of this going on is "intolerable".
A barcode system would give every part a single identity for life, allowing purchasers to quickly verify its history. He hopes that this will exist within six years. A Shared Component Data taskforce, supported by the US Federal Aviation Administration, is working on it and the work should speed up now that Y2K issues are being cleared up, he said.
Computing is behind a wave of ideas and competition in the aviation business and Aviation Week runs a biweekly IT bulletin. One recent issue described how electronic ticketing could reduce theft of ticket stock. Another pointed out that, although the Internet is changing travellers" expectations about how they do business with airline companies, "no one really knows where it will all wind up."
One person who knows what he wants from it is the International Airline Travel Association (IATA) director general Pierre Jeanniot. The magazine reported his vision of "a scenario in which passengers holding a multi-function smart card, including passport, visa and biometric ID data, could enjoy a truly hassle-free experience, from check-in to final clearance at destination".