New decision support system based on operational risk assessment to improve aircraft operability

This paper details a new decision support that adds a proactive function to the actual line aircraft maintenance turn-around-time (TAT) process, where next-flight decisions are assisted by the health assessment function of the integrated vehicle health management (IVHM) of an aircraft. The ‘operational risk assessment’ concept appears an extended function supported on the IVHM information for calculating and evaluating the operational risk for aircraft and fleet operations. It creates or reshapes maintenance plans based on predictions of the future maintenance relevant events (e.g. component-degradation-driven repair or replacement events) and its impact on the operational planning of the aircraft/fleet. ‘Operational risk assessment’ makes it possible to turn the scheduled line maintenance into a proactively defined maintenance. The paper also illustrates the first step involved in this approach: ‘condition view’ function, which is responsible for the provision of the remaining useful life (RUL) prediction of a health managed component. This function provides the basis for the operational risk estimation on the aircraft in order to identify maintenance actions that can be deferred.