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Press Release: Rolls-Royce and SITAONAIR agree e-Aircraft DataHub deal

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Rolls-Royce is the launch customer for SITAONAIR’s game-changing e-Aircraft® DataHub – a new, state-of-the-art neutral aircraft data management service designed to bring significant, distinct benefits to airlines and original equipment manufacturers (OEMs).

Today, harnessing aviation data represents the key to unlocking the untapped potential of modern aircraft. It is crucial to everything from minimizing airline maintenance costs and maximizing aircraft availability, to empowering manufacturers and maintenance, repair and overhaul (MRO) teams to be at their most effective. However, several hurdles have hampered progress – including airlines’ reluctance to permit OEMs access to sensitive data, and the complexity of achieving timely and tailored secure data transfer and distribution to relevant parties.

SITAONAIR’s e-Aircraft® DataHub overcomes these hurdles. As a secure, cloud-based aircraft data-brokering service, it enables airlines to share selected aircraft data from diverse fleets, aircraft models and formats with their chosen OEM, at no cost to the airline.

The agreement supports the Rolls-Royce IntelligentEngine vision – based on a belief that the worlds of product and service have become so closely connected that they are now inseparable. This trend was first identified when Rolls-Royce introduced the market-defining TotalCare® service in the 1990s. Since then, advancements in digital capability have accelerated this change and further blurred the boundary between the two. This coming together of product and service, supercharged by digital technology, offers Rolls-Royce a wealth of opportunities to improve the way it provides power to its customers with engines that are increasingly connected, contextually aware and comprehending.

Image: SITAONAIR

SITAONAIR e-Aircraft® DataHub works by first collecting an airline’s authorized raw data, then expertly classifying, decoding, storing and dispatching the appropriate data sets to that airline’s specified OEM. This is made possible with SITAONAIR’s expertise and established reputation for managing aircraft data on behalf of airlines, making it perfectly positioned to act as a trusted and neutral data intermediary between airlines and OEMs.

Pierre-Yves Benain, Portfolio Head e-Aircraft, SITAONAIR, says: “Our e-Aircraft® DataHub service helps navigate the complex ocean of connected aircraft data, and identifies truly actionable insights for OEMs and their airline customers alike. By acting as a secure, neutral data-broker between an OEM and an airline, SITAONAIR keeps the control and ownership of aircraft data firmly in the airline’s hands, while also providing OEMs with greater insight to drive mutually-beneficial enhancements of their products. No other solution on the market puts airlines in control of their data sharing with third parties in this way.”

Nick Ward, Rolls-Royce Head of Product Management, Servitisation and User Experience, says: “Having extensively trialed SITAONAIR’s e-Aircraft® DataHub in development, we can attest to its effectiveness. This is a powerful data solution, enabling us to work with valued airline customers to navigate and extract greater value from aircraft data, in a trusted way, to help improve aircraft availability and minimize operational costs.”

For SITAONAIR’s airline partners, e-Aircraft® DataHub represents a secure no-cost platform that keeps airlines fully in control of the data they share with OEMs at the point of distribution. It also involves minimal effort from an airline’s IT operation to implement, removing the need to establish a new IT project for every OEM it chooses to share data with.

For OEMs, the solution provides a transformative global data repository, trusted by airlines to provide the deep and timely insights required to deliver an improved service to their global airline customers. The platform is global, and fully scalable, enabling the industry to handle hundreds of airlines’ data from multiple OEMs, thousands of aircraft, and petabytes of aircraft data, in a secure, controlled manner.

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The Rolls-Royce and SITAONAIR deal follows the partners’ successful trial of the service, conducted as part of Rolls-Royce’s pioneering ‘IntelligentEngine vision’ – based on a belief that the world of products and services are increasingly connected, contextually aware and comprehending, helping to deliver greater reliability and efficiency.

The e-Aircraft® DataHub agreement is the latest step in SITAONAIR’s aircraft data management initiative for Rolls-Royce, which began with Rolls-Royce enlisting SITAONAIR’s AIRCOM® FlightMessenger to collate and distribute Engine Health Monitoring data.

About SITAONAIR

SITAONAIR is the air travel industry’s trusted connected aircraft service expert, powering innovation with recognized expertise and future-proof solutions. With our unrivalled industry-backed heritage, SITAONAIR delivers the promises of the connected aircraft, empowering 400+ airlines, 60+ ANSPs and 17,000+ aircraft to navigate the complexity of connectivity with our best-in-class solutions and services for passengers, cockpit and cabin crew, flight operations, aircraft big data and air traffic management. We believe that embracing a digital shift will reinvent the operation of aircraft, flight and on-board experience – making it safer, more efficient and enjoyable.

SITAONAIR is a subsidiary of The SITA Group, the communications and IT solution provider that transforms air travel through technology for airlines, at airports and on aircraft.

About Rolls-Royce Holdings plc

  1. Rolls-Royce pioneers cutting-edge technologies that deliver the cleanest, safest and most competitive solutions to meet our planet’s vital power needs.
  2. Rolls-Royce has customers in more than 150 countries, comprising more than 400 airlines and leasing customers, 160 armed forces, 4,000 marine customers including 70 navies, and more than 5,000 power and nuclear customers.
  3. Annual underlying revenue was £15 billion in 2017, around half of which came from the provision of aftermarket services. The firm and announced order book stood at £78.5 billion at the end of December 2017.
  4. In 2017, Rolls-Royce invested £1.4 billion on research and development. We also support a global network of 31 University Technology Centres, which position Rolls-Royce engineers at the forefront of scientific research.
  5. Rolls-Royce employs 50,000 people in 55 countries. More than 19,400 of these are engineers.
  6. The Group has a strong commitment to apprentice and graduate recruitment and to further developing employee skills. In 2017 we recruited 313 graduates and 339 apprentices through our worldwide training programmes.

Featured image credited to istock.com/JakeOlimb