BA has brought one of its A320neos to the Farnborough Airshow 2024 static display.
FARNBOROUGH—British Airways (BA) has improved the performance of its Airbus A320neo fleet through enhanced use of data and analytics, as it works through a robust transformation plan.
“We were looking at analytics recently … and one thing we began to realize was, if an engine begins to start up later than normal, it’s an indicator that a starter valve is going to fail,” BA CEO and Chairman Sean Doyle said at the Farnborough Airshow. “And now we have a preemptive intervention—if a neo engine is starting up at 6 min. rather than 3, we replace the starter valves before we get an [aircraft on ground] and we’ve reduced aircraft downtime on that fleet by about 4% as a result.”
The carrier has an in-service fleet of 25 CFM Leap-powered A320neos and 15 Leap-powered A321neos, according to Aviation Week Network’s Fleet Discovery database.
“That's just not even using [artificial intelligence], it’s using better computing power and better analytics across the data pools that we already have,” Doyle added, pointing to “tons of opportunities” for making airlines more efficient by better leveraging data.
BA announced its £7 billion ($9 billion) transformation plan in March, outlining hundreds of initiatives ranging from digital upgrades to operational performance. Roughly half of the overall investment is going into new aircraft, while the other half is going into modernizing the airline, Doyle said, including a need to play “catch up” on its long-haul product suite. “It used to be leading, and now it’s lagging,” he said.
Another £100 million is being put into the airline’s operational suite of tools to ensure that its core operations systems are robust and function better in complex environments.
“We need to make sure that in a challenging environment—like Heathrow—that we run a much more intelligent and sophisticated operation than we have been doing,” Doyle said. “Because we operate in one of the most congested airport environments anywhere in the world and we need to be on top of our game, exploiting technology, modernizing the platform and delivering both resilience and operational performance.”
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