AirAsia Group has confirmed that its existing and future A320 and A330 fleet will be powered by Airbus' Skywise Predictive Maintenance services. The scope encompasses AirAsia and AirAsia X's fleets across all of the subsidiaries in Malaysia, Thailand, India, Japan, Philippines and Indonesia. The airline currently has around 230 aircraft in service. This is complemented with an order backlog of around 470 Airbus aircraft - which includes 66 A330neos and over 400 A320/A321neos yet to be delivered. All of these aircraft will thus become Skywise-enabled.

The sheer breadth of aircraft information which AirAsia will soon be able to unlock thanks to Skywise, will be used to gain deep insights, create bespoke recommendations and apply state-of-the-art analytics for enhanced decision-making. In turn this will allow AirAsia to anticipate, with higher levels of accuracy, the needs for maintenance before an event happens, and thus maximise the operational reliability and utilisation of its aircraft assets. As part of the five years contract, AirAsia's entire fleet will be equipped with *FOMAX - a new on-board data-capture/transmission module, which is a key enabling component of Airbus' Skywise Predictive Maintenance services.

In addition to this new premium predictive maintenance service, AirAsia continues to benefit from Skywise Core - a cloud-based environment which offers unparalleled visibility into its fleet operations.

Tan Sri Tony Fernandes, Group Chief Executive Officer of AirAsia, commented: "We eagerly look forward to unleashing the power of Airbus' Skywise big-data analytics and predictive technology to obtain superior operational advantage for AirAsia Group's entire A320 and A330 Family fleets. Skywise will enable us to reach new insights into the operation of our aircraft, optimise our maintenance, engineering and flight operations decision-making and reduce our costs."

Marc Fontaine, Airbus Digital Transformation Officer, commented: "We are honoured to work with AirAsia with their forward-thinking approach and for helping to shape our vision together in this digital adventure. As the aircraft 'architect' and integrator, we naturally thrive in our role of building digital continuity across the aviation ecosystem."

Eric Schulz, Airbus EVP, Chief of Sales, Marketing & Contracts said: "This is a very significant endorsement for the Skywise platform. In particular we are excited that this will enhance further the economics of the future A330neo fleet at the airline."

Airbus launched its new aviation data platform Skywise in collaboration with Palantir Technologies - pioneers in big-data integration and advanced analytics - during the Paris Air Show in July 2017, after experimenting substantial benefits when applying its technologies to its own internal processes for two years. Skywise aims to become a leading user-centric open data platform for all major aviation players to improve their operational performance and business results and to support overall aviation digital transformation. The deliverables will be tailored for each user and will include scalable services (such as analytics, apps and APIs) which can be used by Airbus, customers, and suppliers - ensuring complete data continuity with benefits across the entire value chain.

Contributed by Airbus