Drones will help with aircraft maintenance after new Emirates-Boeing deal

Dubai: Bring on a drone to check on aircraft maintenance works?

With the new deal struck between Emirates and Boeing, deploying a drone is part of the checklist.

Drone assisted aircraft inspections helps by ‘sharpening the precision and effectiveness of maintenance tasks through use of virtual and augmented reality’, Emirates said in a statement.

The Emirates-Boeing Memorandum of Understanding will allow using advanced digital technologies in maintenance operations.

“Whether its drones conducting inspections with meticulous agility or AR visualisations that help engineers see behind panels or inside ducts to locate potentially defective components not visible to the naked eye, without having to dismantle them, we’re taking significant steps to optimize aircraft maintenance to its full potential on our fleet of Boeing 777s," said Ahmed Safa, Divisional Senior Vice President Emirates Engineering.

The integration of drone technology for maintenance tasks represents a fairly significant ‘leap forward for the airline’. It will help speed up exterior inspections on wide-body aircraft utilizing ultra-high resolution cameras. And with the capability to reach every angle of the aircraft to detect surface imperfections.

These new-gen aids will mean engineers can investigate the innermost workings of any part of an aircraft. “These technologies promise to deliver more precise and comprehensive aircraft inspections, reduce the risk of human error, and significantly cut down the time aircraft spend out of service – optimizing fleet availability and performance,” the Emirates statement added.