CASE STUDY: Elevating AirAsia’s Fleet Management

Author: Mohd Solleh Mustafar, Engineer, Maintenance Operation Control, AirAsia and Mahendran Doriasamy, Transformation Manager, Asia Digital Engineering (ADE)

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Mohd Solleh Mustafar, Engineer, Maintenance Operation Control, AirAsia and Mahendran Doriasamy, Transformation Manager, Asia Digital Engineering (ADE) discuss AirAsia’s daily aircraft log and the importance of this in the organization

Mohd Solleh Mustafar

Although this case study is about the importance of a daily aircraft log in AirAsia’s operations, we’ll start with a brief introduction to the airline.

AIRASIA

AirAsia’s mission is to make flying accessible to everyone while delivering a high-quality customer experience. As a low-cost carrier, it is essential that the airline strikes the right balance in aircraft utilization to continue delivering affordable and reliable air travel for all. Achieving this requires high-quality and efficient aircraft maintenance, which is a cornerstone of AirAsia’s operations. In the wake of the pandemic, the global airline industry has faced backlogs in aircraft maintenance, driven by an unprecedented surge in travel demand. This surge created an urgent need to implement new innovative procedures to get aircraft back in the air as quickly, safely, and efficiently as possible.

At AirAsia, safety is always our top priority, and this is never compromised. ADE (AirAsia’s aircraft maintenance and overhaul partner) is committed to being the best in providing high-quality and value-driven Maintenance, Repair, and Overhaul (MRO) services in the region. Aircraft defects, though inevitable, are closely monitored through robust safety management systems. Prior to the pandemic, a manual spreadsheet process was used to identify and resolve these issues. This process required significant labor and coordination with multiple stakeholders, including CAMO (Continuing Airworthiness Management Organization).

For instance, if four minor defects were found on each of 100 aircraft, that would mean 400 different areas requiring attention – each needing careful tracking and resolution. In line with our core values of innovation and continuous improvement, ADE is now streamlining this process with new procedures aimed at improving efficiency and safety, ensuring that we are always ready to meet the growing demand for air travel.

Mahendran Doriasamy

Many things changed after the pandemic, including the operational challenges faced by the aviation industry. Supply chain disruption, limited hanger space, manpower shortages and, of course, higher aircraft utilization requirements contributed to a rise in numerous unscheduled maintenance activities.

An eTechLog might have been an ideal solution; however, at the time, it was not readily available in the Southeast Asia region to transform existing processes. Furthermore, it lacked the comprehensive capabilities needed to holistically manage aircraft status reports.

Addressing technical challenges while maintaining industry leadership requires collaborative input from various departments within engineering, including materials, planning, and technical services. This complexity underscored the need for an integrated aircraft status report system to consolidate information across these functions. To address these challenges, we adopted an innovative approach that led to the development of ELEVADE™, an application-based aircraft status report management system. ELEVADE™ has been a game changer for the engineering department, significantly enhancing efficiency and streamlining operations (Figure 1).

Figure 1

DAILY AIRCRAFT STATUS REPORT (DASR)

Managing a fleet of over 100 aircraft is a monumental task, especially with approximately 400 flights daily and 20 to 30 VHF radio calls from pilots. Adding to this complexity, there are typically 30 to 40 deferred defects that must be captured in the DASR. These details need to be prioritized and assigned to the maintenance team based on the availability of spares, tools, and aircraft.

Every defect raised or updated, along with its rectification status, is recorded and shared in a report issued by the maintenance team at the end of each shift. The Maintenance Control Center (MCC) then consolidates this information into the aircraft status report. This process often involves extensive manual copying, pasting, and updating, which is both time-consuming and error-prone.

Adding another layer of complexity to the process, the MCC must prepare a summary report to highlight key information, as the detailed status report can become overwhelming due to the volume of data. On a good day, this workflow is already demanding. Aircraft on Ground (AOG) situations, especially at remote stations, add significant challenges for the MCC team, increasing the complexity and requiring exceptional coordination.

The introduction of ELEVADE™ resulted in better control, enabling the team to manage daily challenges with greater efficiency (Figure 2).

Figure 2

This is how the transformation unfolded. Readers would know that the techlog has traditionally been a communication channel between pilots and maintenance engineers. However, it doesn’t offer the opportunity to communicate with other departments within engineering whereas, most of the time input is required from various departments within engineering to resolve all outstanding deferred defects. ELEVADE™ bridges this gap by centralizing, on a single platform, all engineering activities related to deferred defects and unscheduled maintenance (figure 3).

Figure 3

ELEVADE™ eliminates redundant data entry and reporting, allowing engineers to update deferred defects in real time using their mobile app and the DASR module automates due date, flight cycle and flight hours calculations for deferred defects through integration with the maintenance information system.

This significantly reduces delays in capturing defects and frees the MCC and other teams’ time to focus on rectification planning, including spares identification and arrangements, ordering and task assignment. Tasks are assigned to the maintenance team: Licensed Aircraft Engineers (LAEs) will receive an in-app notification and proceed with the rectification. Upon completion, the LAEs will update the records, and then the process continues until the defect is resolved. The MCC teams will then review and approve the close request from maintenance before the system archives it from the aircraft status report.

Another advantage is that, during sign-on briefing, pilots are now able to check, the technical status of the aircraft they are going to operate through the ELEVADE™ mobile app.

Managing aircraft status reports manually through spreadsheets is both time-intensive and inefficient, more so for large-scale operators. By transitioning to a cloud-based platform such as ELEVADE™, AirAsia has streamlined its processes, significantly improved coordination, and enhanced overall operational efficiency.

USING ELEVADE™ DASR IN AIRASIA

Mohd Solleh Mustafar

That’s how DASR works and from an operations point of view, let’s see how it has worked and is working in practice for AirAsia; the outcome for us and the impact of using ELEVADE™ DASR for our deferred defect management (figure 4).

Figure 4

The figure shows just a broad view of the improvements that we have seen at AirAsia, but I want to focus specifically on how it has improved our man hours in managing routine tasks.

First of all, the application has an image attachment (figure 5).

Figure 5

The best thing about image is that it speaks multiple languages and is easy to understand during a discussion. If we have a defect where there are multiple departments or organizations involved in multiple discussion platforms. With ELEVADE™ DASR, we are capable of centralizing the communication, by snipping the image and pasting it on the deferred defect column. When new people get involved, they can continue where the last communication left off and can track the previous communications based on the attachment in the deferred defect report.

Another process where ELEVADE™ has delivered improvement is Task Assignment (figure 6).

Figure 6

For task assignments from the operator to the maintenance organization, previously we copied and pasted information manually in the DASR spreadsheet format from one sheet to another. Once the task within the sheet was performed, we had to copy and paste the update back into the DASR spreadsheet. If the task was performed during multiple aircraft AOGs, there is a risk of potential error.  With ELEVADE™ DASR, MOC engineers can simply tick the relevant task and assign it directly to the ADE engineers via the assignment module. Updates are accessible in real-time, significantly saving man-hours while reducing the risk of human error.

ELEVADE™ has further enhanced the Daily Operations summary process (Figure 7), an essential task that Line Maintenance performs every morning.

Figure 7

By the end of the night shift, the MOC is responsible for producing the Operation Summary Report, which provides the necessary information to kickstart the daily operations. Both Flight Operations and Ground Operations must be prepared to manage the aircraft, taking into account any limitations, which are dependent on Engineering Information.

Here’s how the process works now: When a deferred defect, such as an inoperative APU, is raised, the engineer directly updates the DDML (Deferred Defect Management List) within the application. They select the appropriate limitation option and update the description. Once this step is completed, the summary is sent to the limitation page, where it can be monitored by both Flight Ops and Ground Ops.

The final process to highlight the improvements made possible by ELEVADE™ is Materials Request (figure 8).

Figure 8

There are two images in the figure. The top part is used by the MOC and engineers. So, if engineers or the MOC need to order spares, they click the “Parts Request” button at the top right, in blue. Then, they enter the material description, part number, and the pick slip (parts order tracking number).

Once this is done, the information moves to the parts request list at the bottom. This list is then used by the Material and Purchasing departments to track all the materials needed to fix the deferred defect. The MOC also uses it to monitor which items are available for assignment to the Part-145 maintenance section.

The initiative kicked off in early 2023. We tested it thoroughly to make sure it wouldn’t disrupt operations when migrated from spreadsheet to ELEVADE™. We were extra cautious, given the scale of our operation, because we didn’t want any glitches during the rollout.

Mahendran Doriasamy

We’ll just look at three important future proof features in ELEVADE™ DASR (figure 9).

Figure 9

While efficiency gains might not always translate immediately into measurable results, they often lead to tangible outcomes like increased productivity, time saving and reduced workload. This improvement contributes to a more positive and engaged workforce.

On transparency, ELEVADE™ prevents data silos within the engineering departments as all personnel can work on the application at the same time, using customized filters and settings without affecting progress. All processes and actions are trackable for analysis.

On scalability. Even though we developed this based on Azure use case, the application is fully capable to integrate with E Tech cloud to automate aircraft status report generation.

LOOKING TO THE FUTURE

The system officially went live in mid-2024, and by the time of writing, we’ve been using the ELEVADE™ DASR for almost seven months.

The user adoption has been fantastic, and I’m genuinely surprised at how smoothly it has gone. Our workforce includes nearly 1,000 staff members, and if you include the pilots, it’s over 2,000 people. Most of the feedback we’ve received so far has been about adding more features to improve day-to-day workflows. I think the users feel empowered by the solution, which is why we didn’t encounter many challenges when launching it. Now that everyone is comfortable with the system, we’re already planning the next phase of development.

We plan to roll-out ELEVADE™ to all AirAsia fleets starting with AirAsia Malaysia. Next will be AirAsia Thailand before moving on to AirAsia Philippines. We also plan to eventually use the system for base maintenance and heavy checks. There will be another module to manage base maintenance progress, where there will be a different dashboard to cater for base maintenance requirements. As readers may be aware, ADE recently launched a state of the art 14-line MRO facility. So, we are working towards further integration of the new system to improve efficiency across our base maintenance facilities and operations.

We all know AI is the future, and many of us are heading towards leveraging AI for maintenance. At ADE, we are working towards that goal. We have done the most crucial steps where all crucial information is centralized to train our model to provide holistic insights for a defect rectification.

We hope that readers have found our case study to be enlightening, informative and, most importantly, useful.