Aircraft Ground Events: tracking global maintenance events

I’m pleased to announce the availability of a new “Data Demonstrator” within the new Airline Profiles product. We’ve added a tab (alongside Fleet and News) titled “Ground Events”. On this tab you’ll find a data visualisation that shows tracked aircraft ground events (>7days duration) going back to Jan 2019. For each tracked ground event, you’ll see:

  • Aircraft registration and type
  • Ground event location
  • Arrival date and time
  • Departure date and time
  • Ground event duration (in days)
  • Aircraft age (at the time of the event)

For some events, we’ve added the following:

  • Event type e.g. C-Check, Livery, Heavy Maintenance, Retrofit etc.
  • Maintenance provider e.g. Etihad Engineering, Sabena Technics etc.

What’s a Data Demonstrator?

A Data Demonstrator is one of the ways in which we can let users get an early look at a new dataset that we are considering using as the basis of a new product, or adding to existing products.

In this case, we’re asking users who may be interested in ground events, or the labelling/identification of ground events to get in touch we so can discuss their specific requirements.

How can Cirium track and identify global ground events?

We track global ground events via satellite-based ADS-B monitoring.

In order to identify/label individual ground events, we combine a number of existing Cirium capabilities and datasets:

  • Fleet-Flight matching (matching individual aircraft to tracked flights)
  • Airline-MRO relationships (which airlines have contracts with which MROs)
  • MRO locations and capabilities
  • Airline maintenance intervals e.g. hours, cycles, months

By combining the capabilities and datasets listed above, we believe we can identify the reasons behind many ground events that exceed 7 days in duration.

How is this displayed in Profiles?

For each Airline Profile, you’ll find a new tab titled “Ground Events”, a screenshot of the contents of the tab for FedEx is shown below.

FedEx livery changes

Providing feedback

We are interested in hearing from users who believe that Ground Events could be useful to them, and we’d appreciate any feedback on this new dataset. If you are interested in Ground Events, the identification of Ground Events e.g. Base Maintenance, Paint/Strip etc. or predicting future Ground Events, then please get in touch via email at mark.evans@cirium.com.