Maintenance and Modifications
Aviation Maintenance Business Embraces Tech Advances
Efforts toward digitalization vital to creating efficiencies and ensuring safety
Pratt & Whitey Cobot photographing a GTF engine
Pratt & Whitney adopted robotic technology as a means to photograph engines from various angles as part of pre-induction inspection.

Breakthroughs in technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), digital twins, health monitoring, and augmented reality have begun to present possibilities for a leap forward in the way maintenance departments ensure aircraft, as well as their engines and other systems, remain in service.

Increasingly, the maintenance, repair, and overhaul (MRO) sector has begun to embrace a path away from "paper-based" processes to one committed to digital transformation, according to General Aviation Manufacturers Association director of airworthiness and regulatory affairs Joe Sambiase. AI is one such technological advancement that will accelerate that digital transformation.