Planes could give heads-up when part is about to break

By: Charlsy Panzino

What if an aircraft could tell you a part needs maintenance before it actually breaks?

That's the kind of technology that the head of Air Mobility Command is hoping to install on the command's aircraft as one way to deal with its older fleet.

The goal is to outfit the planes with instruments that will monitor specific equipment and relay information back to the maintainers, giving them a heads up if a part is worn out and needs to be repaired or replaced.

“As the airplane is beeping and squeaking ... as it's passing its zeros and ones, we can do an algorithm on the data that is received and we can say, predictability means this is going to fail at that time, go check that part,” Gen. Carlton Everhart told Air Force Times at the Pentagon on Thursday.

Everhart said instruments have been installed on one of AMC's C-5M Super Galaxy transport aircraft to begin testing the idea of predictive maintenance.

Full article: https://www.airforcetimes.com/news/your-air-force/2018/08/02/planes-could-give-heads-up-when-part-is-about-to-break