by Elsie Clark | Sep 9, 2025 | Flight Ops IT
Air Peace and Embraer are collaborating on a new maintenance, repair, and operations (MRO) centre in Lagos, Nigeria.
The project was initially proposed two years ago, but is now ready for take off. Air Peace and the Brazilian aircraft manufacturer will start construction on the new facility later this month, with operations expected to commence next year.
An Embraer spokesperson said:
[We] will use [our] experience in the commercial MRO industry to provide advice on aspects related to hangar and capacity planning, tooling/GSE needs, technical training avenues, leadership matrix and KPIs, to list a few.
The OEMs expertise will help maintain Air Peace’s Embraer aircraft, as well as other fleet types in their arsenal.
The new centre will not only support Air Peace, but other airlines across Africa. Egyptair, Ethiopian Airlines, and Royal Air Maroc are among the few African airlines who operate MRO centres within the continent. According to the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria, the country spends US$2.5 billion on offshore aircraft maintenance each year.
This lack of infrastructure is not only expensive, but protracts downtime for African aircraft. It also diverts resources away from a native aviation industry that is experiencing significant growth: according to IATA, Africa’s aviation market is expected to double by 2044. The Air Peace/Embraer MRO centre therefore represents a significant milestone in the development of West African aviation.
Join us at Aerospace Tech Week 2026, where we’ll be discussing the future of MRO, from predictive analytics to digital twins.
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by Jessica Brownlow | Jul 7, 2025 | AI & ML, Flight Ops IT, Video
At Aerospace Tech Week, Rob Galbraith, Director of Flight Operations at United Airlines reflected on the airline’s flight operations progress looking at the technology driving change, opportunities for AI/ML integration, and the greatest challenges to seamless real-world operations.
Galbraith picked out the electronic flight bag (EFB) as one of the most impactful areas of progress due to its more flexible regulatory status. This offers flexibility for airlines and developers to innovate and respond to changing demands.
Acknowledging not every aspect of the industry is keeping pace with desired progress, Galbraith described the greatest challenge to achieving seamless flight ops as:
“Working with our training teams to actually train how we expect the pilot to operate. Right now we do a great job with simulators training how we would like to actually fly the airplane, but not operate the airplane. The next step is that we can use it in the simulator and mirror exactly how the crew would use it on the line flying a real flight. And currently that’s not possible in a lot of cases.”
AI and ML also sit at the heart of the industry’s optimisation strategy. Galbraith shared how the technology is being leveraged to help flight crews make better real-time decisions as well as streamline backend processes like updating manuals and ensuring compliance across global regulations.
To learn more watch the full interview below. To hear live from industry experts join us at Aerospace Tech Week 2026 in April!
Questions asked include:
- Which technology do you believe is currently driving the most progress in flight ops?
- Are there any emerging technologies that, although they are still in their infancy, you expect will have a major impact in the future?
- How is United integrating AI & ML into flight ops systems and to what end? Can you share any specific examples?
- What do you understand as the greatest challenge to achieving seamless flight ops, and what’s United’s strategy for overcoming this?
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by Jessica Brownlow | Jun 20, 2025 | AI & ML, Flight Ops IT, Innovation, Video
The European Organisation for Civil Aviation Equipment (EUROCAE) develops standards ensuring safety, reliability, and innovation in aviation. As the industry landscape evolves rapidly, it is imperative standards keep pace with both the technological advancement and changing operational, environmental, and human factors that come too. At Aerospace Tech Week, Anna von Groote, Director General, EUROCAE explored this and more in this five-minute interview.
The conversation looked at the importance of addressing human factors to support safe, effective AI adoption with von Groote adding, “we in aviation know well how to deal with technical things but now the human factor is a really important topic as well.” Here, she explored the dedicated Working Groups that have been set up with this focus, shifting away from purely technical standards.
Towards the end of the discussion, von Groote unpacked the challenges of an increasingly congested airspace, and explained:
“IATA predicts growth of passenger traffic by 2.7 times in the next couple of years […] So we have to again be very holistic and look at the innovation pipeline – bringing technology to market, ensuring we give industry a framework, a regulatory framework, including technical standards, so the industry can safely deploy and bring these technologies to market.”
For more on this as well as taking a holistic approach to sustainability, watch the full interview below.
Questions asked include:
- AI is a critical part of the sector’s evolution. How should the industry tackle human factors around AI-decision making? Or broader integration?
- The journey to net-zero will involve embracing new technologies, aircraft, such as hydrogen. How can we ensure these are integrated into the ecosystem without safety being compromised?
- As airspace becomes more congested, how can we advance air traffic management to accommodate this growth?
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by Jessica Brownlow | May 9, 2025 | Connectivity, Flight Ops IT
Originally published on TotalTele
The three-year plan will see new telecoms equipment deployed at over 4,600 locations
This week, the US Department of Transport (DOT) has announced a new plan to upgrade the nation’s ‘antiquated’ air traffic control infrastructure.
The three-year ‘Brand New Air Traffic Control System Plan’ will includes upgrades throughout the system, from new hardware and software to the construction of six new air traffic control centres.
“Decades of neglect have left us with an outdated system that is showing its age. Building this new system is an economic and national security necessity, and the time to fix it is now,” said Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy in a statement.
The update will also include a major revamp of the system’s telecoms infrastructure, including “new fiber, wireless and satellite technologies at over 4,600 sites, 25,000 new radios and 475 new voice switches”.
The financial requirements for such an upgrade were not formally announced, but Duffy said that “billions” would be required from Congress to complete the project.
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by Jessica Brownlow | Apr 16, 2025 | Flight Ops IT
The Universal Virtual Flight Data Recorder (UVFDR) initiative is being expanded to improve aviation safety globally. The project is entering a new phase with the support of the European Space Agency (ESA) and the UK Space Agency (UKSA) under the Business Applications and Space Solutions (BASS) programme.
In 2023, CGI secured a contract under the European Space Agency (ESA)’s Space Systems for Safety and Security (4S) programme with the support from the UK Space Agency to develop a cloud-based virtual flight data recorder that securely transmits and stores in-flight data in real time, enhancing aviation safety, compliance, and incident response for all types of aircraft.
Following the success of the original UVFDR project, CGI is now establishing a scalable, cloud-based system – CGI VirtualFlightRecorder, which replicates the functions of a Black Box, improves operational efficiency, and provides compliance with emerging global aeronautics distress and safety (GADSS) standards.
According to the press release, key benefits include:
- Improved data resilience in emergencies: by demonstrating satellite data transmission for flights in emergency scenarios, exploring solutions for completeness of flight telemetry and data integrity through flights with Cranfield University’s Flying Laboratory.
- Global standards compliance: the system will provide a route to an acceptable means of compliance for GADSS informed by EASA, FAA, and EUROCAE recommendations.
- Seamless operational integration: advanced interfaces and features will support real-time data transmission and monitoring, which can be integrated with existing aviation systems through commonly available aircraft interface devices (AID) or similar systems.
- Data integrity and legal admissibility: demonstrating compliance with standards for using flight data in regulatory and legal investigations.
Neil Timms, Senior Vice President, Space, Defence and Intelligence at CGI in the UK and Australia, said:
“This ongoing project underscores CGI’s role in advancing aviation safety through transformative technology. By evolving the UVFDR into a commercial service, CGI VirtualFlightRecorder will help aircraft operators boost their operational efficiency while supporting safer skies, meeting the industry’s evolving operations, safety and regulatory needs.”
This technology will empower stakeholders across the industry and is designed with commercial air transport, business and general aviation, and advanced air mobility in mind.
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by Jessica Brownlow | Apr 14, 2025 | Flight Ops IT, Innovation
On Wednesday, Trump announced a 90-day pause on most tariffs introduced on 2nd April. This delay has offered short-term reprieve but has not provided assurances for what the future holds. Wider supply chain challenges have plagued the industry for years now, impacting performance, revenue, and capacity. Now, with the threat of US tariffs, more uncertainty and disruption looms.
Last week, Delta Air Lines CEO, Ed Bastian said during a Q1 earnings call the airline has no plans to pay extra on any incoming aircraft. Although Delta is set to received dozens of planes from France-based Airbus this year, Bastian was resolute in his sentiment, saying:
“Obviously in this environment, we are going to work very closely with Airbus, which is the only airline we’ve got deliveries coming from for the balance of this year. And they’ve been a great partner. We’ll do our very best to see what we have to do to minimize tariffs. But the one thing that you need to know we are very clear on is that we will not be paying tariffs on any aircraft deliveries we take. These times are pretty uncertain. And if you start to put a 20 per cent incremental cost on top of an aircraft, it gets very difficult to make that math work. So we’ve been clear with Airbus on that and we’ll work through and see what happens from that.”
Publications like the Wall Street Journal are highlighting that since the 1980s, Boeing, Airbus, and other aerospace manufacturers have enjoyed exemptions that enabled them to build aircraft and jet engines without tariffs for the most part.
The nature of aerospace’s global supply chain today, means rising cost of materials and components will have a knock on effect throughout the entire ecosystem. With aircraft orders already backlogged, the uncertainty surrounding the tariffs adds strain to a supply chain that is already under heavy stress. It may also impact the delivery schedules and prioritisation of aircraft for carriers.
Back in February, Airbus CEO Guillaume Faury suggested that, should tariffs disrupt imports into the US, the plane-maker could prioritise deliveries to other countries:
“We have a large demand from the rest of the world, so [if] we face very significant difficulties to deliver to the US, we can also adapt by bringing forward deliveries to other customers which are very eager to get planes.”
With the industry bracing itself for the latest update on tariffs and their impact, the coming months will be critical. For more on Delta’s response, watch this short video by Simple Flying below.
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