Cirium launches revolutionary aircraft maintenance tracking and projection tool

Cirium Ascend’s new Ground Events analytics tool is set to revolutionize the aviation aftermarket by providing the first truly global view of historical and projected aircraft maintenance events using satellite-based flight tracking.

Ground Events, the latest addition to the Cirium Ascend portfolio, provides MROs, OEMs, aircraft parts suppliers and airlines with the ability to generate comprehensive analytics which includes market share trends, turnaround times to derive strategic insights on markets for airframe maintenance, cabin retrofits and aircraft paint work.

The solution’s easy access to data makes Ground Events a powerful tool, helping users better understand aircraft maintenance events. Businesses such as MRO providers can analyse market share, forecast future ground events, and improve cost efficiency.

Mehmet Erdogan, VP of Ascend said: “We collaborated with the market, including a major European OEM, to launch a first-of-its-kind solution which pinpoints when the last maintenance check actually occurred and predicts future events based on this. It’s our mission to support the industry to inform their analysis of aircraft maintenance and better plan for future checks and events, saving significant time and costs.”

Cirium’s Ground Events tracks aircraft locations and dates on the ground, along with maintenance contract details, to analyze why a commercial aircraft has been grounded for seven or more consecutive days. It also offers insights into historical maintenance patterns and usage trends, allowing for future maintenance projections at the tail number level.

In accessing Ground Events users can select from a range of maintenance events such as C-checks, Heavy checks, strip/painting, retrofits and/or a combination of any of the above for a customizable search over a chosen date range. The results can then be filtered by a variety of different fields such as operator, MRO provider, location, aircraft and engine data. The results are then displayed in an easily digestible format of tables and charts that can be compared to historical data and exported as required.

The tool enables businesses to analyze the data to precisely place aftermarket services and parts where they are needed, understand maintenance patterns of different aircraft types, identify retrofit opportunities and overall, optimize how aircraft are being utilized.

Ground Events shows, for example, that FedEx Express, a global delivery service company, permanently retired 22 Boeing 757s between March and May 2024 for fleet modernization. This anticipated the supply chain issues involving heavy maintenance for the 757 which peaked from Q2 2021 to Q1 of the following year, with a decline in fleet size and flight hours by the end of 2022.

Similarly, the tool shows over 450 Airbus A330-200/300s are expected to undergo C or Heavy maintenance checks during the next eight quarters. For this, Cirium tracked nearly 650 A330ceos undergoing checks with 47 MRO providers in the past two years.

Ground Events uses detailed data on aircraft maintenance from around 57,000 ground events dating back to 2018 to help predict trends and upcoming peaks and troughs in demand. It integrates proprietary fleet maintenance intelligence and satellite-based flight tracking to ensure precise locations and dates of aircraft on the ground. The data is supported by a team of fleet data experts and flight data analysis to ensure accurate and up to date information is shared, with an average of 2,700 updates per week.