Computer-Based Maintenance Tracking Flight Training ... - NATA

Computer-Based MaintenanceTracking Takes WingBy Paul Seidenman & David J. SpanovichAs business aircraft growincreasingly complex,the hangar door is closingon the era of paperbasedmaintenancetracking—if, indeed,it hasn’t already shut. Just ascommercial airline maintenancerecords long ago migrated to thecomputer, so too is the same informationpertaining to businessaircraft inspections and repairs.“The major advantage of maintenancetracking software is thatit can track the thousands of partsthat make up an airplane,” saidSean Lancaster, vice president ofBristol Associates, a Washington,D.C.,-based aircraft marketingfirm. “This includes life limitedparts, which require scheduledmaintenance or disposal and mustbe tracked by date and/or utilization.”According to Lancaster, many ofthese software products providesortable alert messages concerningwhen inspections are comingdue. “This is vital to keep theaircraft airworthy, especially sincethe FAA has the authority to spotcheckthe maintenance recordsat any time,” he said. “If the FAAfinds that an inspection has beenmissed, they will likely assumeother inspections have been overlooked,and then things spiral.”But this isn’t just an FAA issue,said Lancaster, who pointed outthat airplanes with an “electronicmaintenance record trail” tendto have a higher resale value.“Without it, the asking price willbe negatively impacted becausethe prospective buyer would haveto cull through page after page ofpaper-based records, which wouldthen have to be manually enteredinto a computerized data base.”Factoring in hourly labor costs,this could range between $20,000and $25,000, which could bededucted from the asking priceof the plane, according to Lancaster.“That’s why, for at least thepast five years, we haven’t seen abusiness aircraft that hasn’t beenon some kind of computer-basedmaintenance tracking program.”Technology Looking GlassDennis Steinbeck, vice presidentof Avtrak LLC, a maintenancesoftware developer in Littleton,Colo., said that the ability to predictwhen maintenance will comedue is a major selling point. Hesaid that developers are strivingto provide “a technology lookingglass” to analyze the operationaltrends of individual components.“They would predict, in realtime, when component failurecould occur. In that way, you canbe better prepared, and downtimecould be reduced,” said Steinbeck,who also considers hosting thesoftware and storing the maintenanceinformation on the softwarevendor’s website to be critical.“The global Internet networkprovides an opportunity for everybodyinvolved with the aircraft’smaintenance to call up the siteand check the maintenance statusand records on a real-time basis.”He said that the Internet givesthe added value of “bridging thecommunications gap” betweenthe aircraft owner and the servicecenter because representativesof both can see the maintenancestatus of the airplane at the sametime.“When an aircraft enters aservice center, it might be determinedthat the owner did notprovide some of the informationthe service center people shouldhave had at the time. With a webbasedsystem, it’s all right therefor everyone to see.”“This effectively gives our customersanother set of eyes,” saidDan Fuoco, service sales departmentmanager of Duncan Aviationin Lincoln, Nebr. “By comparingthe records on the customer’ssystem—if authorized to see it—with what is in the log books, wecan make sure that something hasnot been overlooked or erroneouslyrecorded.”Avtrak’s Dennis Steinbeckreported that web-based maintenancetracking systems have theadvantage of providing instantupdates of such information asservice bulletins or airworthinessdirectives. “To do that, thesoftware vendor simply updatesthe program just one time, andthe new information is displayedon the website, eliminating theneed to distribute huge batches ofnewly updated CDs.”In fact, most major vendors ofbusiness aircraft maintenancetracking software offer Internetaccessibleproducts, and thosewho use them range from large,multi-fleet operators to those withonly a handful of aircraft.AMI Jet Charter, which currentlyhas 85 aircraft operating from45 bases on its certificate, uses sixdifferent tracking programs, allContinued on page 46Aviation Business Journal | 3 rd Quarter 200745