Gallery: Asia's Digitalization Drive

Sri Lankan Airlines

Despite being among the majority of airlines heavily impacted by the cut to passenger numbers during COVID-19, Sri Lankan Airlines is nevertheless looking at new technologies to enhance its business in the long-term. The carrier is exploring the possibility of using big data analytics for predictive maintenance as well as 3D printing, enhanced inspection methods and robotic automation systems. "We are upgrading our [enterprise resource planning (ERP)] system as well. By second-quarter 2022, we will be on a new platform with enhanced capabilities that include mobile device-based paperless operations," Shevantha Weerasekera, head of engineering at Sri Lankan Airlines told Aviation Week.

Gameco

After announcing plans to spend around $85 million on two new facilities at its Guangzhou base, Gameco also plans to roll out several new digitally driven initiatives. The MRO has spent the past few years initiating its Smart MRO project with a series of rollouts including mobile the installation of a mobile route maintenance management system, electronic signature of work card and the application of RFID technology in aviation materials and tool equipment management, to name a few. Underpinning this is a 5G internet network, which has equipped its facilities since 2019. Long-term, it plans to build an Internet of things infrastructure by using RFID, digital monitoring technology, further realize the digitization of tools, aviation materials and equipment and obtain its tracking and status data in real time.

ST Engineering Aerospace first looked into using solar power at its facilities in 2016.

CASL

Hong Kong’s China Aircraft Services (CASL), which offers multiple MRO services, rolled out a Ramco MRO software system in January 2021. The company says its implementation meant the company had become a fully digitized MRO which would result in eventual efficiency improvements.

Jetstar

Jetstar implemented Airbus’ Skywise data platform before the pandemic struck and used the system to reorganize some of its scheduled heavy maintenance work from this year into 2021. The airline told Aviation Week that it used Skywise to ingest the task cards and allowed it oversight which aircraft would need doing at which time and how to comply with each task sufficiently.

Much of the leasing industry’s digital initiatives focus on paperless records, and this is the case for Singapore-based Dragon Aviation Capital (DAC). The company says it is providing aircraft records scanning services where the end-product of the documents are structured to tailor fit to the lessor’s or operator’s requirements which is fully searchable by means of OCR text recognition. “These digitized records are maintained in a secured cloud service accessible to anyone who is authorized to access it from wherever their location may be”, says Jefferson Ding, DAC’s team leader of aircraft asset management.