Safran Landing Systems, Safran Engineering Services and regional aircraft manufacturer ATR have developed ‘Smart Lander’, an innovative landing gear diagnostics service that uses state-of-the-art knowledge in data analysis to optimise the manufacturer’s response times in the event of hard landings and will enable aircraft to be quickly returned to service.
This extremely innovative service, the first of its kind in the aviation industry, is based on machine learning technology. Based on hundreds of thousands of hard landing simulations, Smart Lander issues recommendations to operators on the maintenance actions to be taken according to the hardness of the landing and to the load level sustained by the landing gear. Aircraft can subsequently be permitted to continue their commercial operations or alternatively, be sent to a maintenance base. This process takes less than an hour, compared to over a week previously.
David Brigante, ATR Customer Support and Services Senior Vice-President, stated: “Our former process could take up to 10 to 20 working days. It required analyses from both the ATR Design Office and Safran Landing Systems to decide whether the aircraft was fit to return to service. With Smart Lander, we will be able to massively reduce ATR response times, therefore boosting aircraft availability, reducing costs for customers and enhancing customer satisfaction, while maintaining the same level of analysis quality.”
