Russian aircraft maintenance provider S7 Technics, in combination with global airline association IATA (International Air Transport Association), have jointly held a Digital Aircraft Operations 2019 seminar focusing on the critical subject of disposing of the burden of the industry’s paper mountain through the digitalization of air transport management processes.
The migration of aircraft operations and maintenance standards from paper to the use of the latest digital technology tools has become a big focus of attention for today’s air transport specialists, especially as their industry is facing many significant changes. Leading airlines, lessors, MRO service providers, as well as aircraft manufacturers are all in the process of digitalizing their business processes – and the subject stretches far and wide to include a range of changes relating to automated fleet management systems, operational analysis and the improvement of aircraft reliability.
The two-day Moscow seminar was patronized by more than 30 key representatives of Russian aviation authorities, as well as executives from the Irkut Corporation, Russian and CIS airlines and S7 Group.
“One of the main goals of the Digital Aircraft Operations 2019 seminar was attracting the attention of the Russian aviation authorities – and airlines from Russia and the CIS – to the importance of digitalization. S7 Technics is actively digitalizing its production processes and, for example, we are now introducing electronic digital signatures, a mobile package of the AMOS information system,” states Maxim Pivovar, IT director at S7 Technics.
“We consider it important that the benefits of digitalisation should be of interest to all market players and its regulators. This is also a matter of the global competitiveness of the Russian air transport industry in general and the domestic aircraft maintenance industry in particular,” Pivovar adds.
At the seminar, IATA experts Chris Markou and Dragos Budeanu talked about the association’s initiatives in the implementation of paperless workflows in aircraft maintenance and shared their vision of the digitalization of aircraft operations, giving typical examples of current and recent business process digitalization, related legal frameworks, regulations and industry standards.
“The term of Digital Aircraft Operations is quite difficult to accurately translate into Russian so that the translation is concise and reflects all the nuances of this topic. Aircraft digital management should not be considered as just a rejection of paper workflow. Indeed, air transport digitalization processes must be looked at through a broader lens because, in the progressive world, air transport digitalization has become a real trend. And Russian aviation industry needs to participate in these trends,” Markou notes.
Following the Digital Aircraft Operations 2019 event, all participants received IATA certificates of attendance. S7 Technics plans to hold similar seminars for technical staff on other relevant topics.