Approach for Digitalization of Maintenance Processes within the Aircraft Cabin 2022-01-0021

Enhancing the comfort for passengers, airlines are constantly increasing the number of services within the aircraft cabin such as meal ordering directly from passenger seats. The payment and menu selection can be completely processed by means of a passenger-individual airline user account also considering the remaining inventory of the galley. The implementation of such type of services is supported by digitalization of cabin business processes. For these new services the airline requires a high availability of the process-related system functions to ensure airline’s revenue and customer satisfaction.

A possible approach to reach the target of high availability of these functions is to use the trend of digitalization for improving function-relevant maintenance processes within the aircraft cabin. This requires an introduction of flexible communication architectures to enhance the existing maintenance process by establishing an automated fault detection, root cause analysis, and/or even fault prediction. For implementation it is necessary to provide system data and parameters digitally, e.g. by sensor measurements or an online evaluation of already existing system data logs. An example is the working light within the aircraft galley used to create an appropriate working environment for the cabin crew to prepare ordered meals for the passengers. Currently, fault detection is only possible by identifying its failure effect, i.e. a not illuminating lighting unit. However, by measuring the current consumption of the light source via a digital sensor, it would be possible to detect a changing trend in the current consumption and, in turn, triggering a maintenance task to replace the light before it actually fails. The evaluation of such current measurement with the resulting fault prediction would expand the maintenance system by a new function.

This paper describes how digitally supportable maintenance processes for any cabin system can be systematically identified and which system modifications are necessary for realization. Further-more, a methodology for cost and benefit assessment is introduced to find the right level of digitization for the cabin system under analysis.