FLYHT's JumpSeat
FLYHT's JumpSeat
#23 From Telex to Terabytes: Why Aircraft Data Needs a Modern Upgrade
In this episode of The Jump Seat, host Chris Glass sits down with Willie Cecil of Flight Aerospace to demystify one of aviation's biggest hidden challenges: how aircraft operational data is collected, transmitted, and used today—and why it desperately needs a 21st-century overhaul. From legacy telex-based communication systems to manual engine downloads that take hours, Willie explains why so much of aviation still operates like it’s the 1970s—and what’s finally changing.
Willie introduces us to Edge+, a 5G-enabled data solution that’s helping airlines collect massive amounts of flight data in real time, paving the way for true predictive maintenance and more connected, efficient airline operations. They dive deep into the limitations of ACARS, QAR, and FADEC data handling, the rise of private 5G networks at airports, and what a fully connected aircraft can really unlock. Whether you’re an aviation pro or just fascinated by the tech that keeps us flying, this is one episode you won’t want to miss.
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to another edition of the Jump Seat Podcast. I am your host, Chris Glass. I am here with Willie Cecil. Willie, welcome to the show.
Willie Cecil:Hey, thanks, how's it going?
Chris Glass:Great. Now, willie. You work for FLYHT Aerospace, an FTG company, and you're based out of Chicago.
Willie Cecil:That's right. I've been here 20 years now.
Chris Glass:Now being based out of Chicago. You're not too far from Atlanta. Atlanta was where the MROs Americas was. Tell me about that conference and how was your experience?
Willie Cecil:Yeah, just go back. It's a great three-day show and it was phenomenal this year. Everybody in the industry is there. You could say movers and shakers, or future movers and shakers, if you like are there. There's so many airlines, the aircraft and engine OEMs and just about everybody in the maintenance and repair and overhaul MRO space and I think something like 10 to 15,000, maybe more people. It's like, I think, the biggest, one of the biggest shows in the industry.
Chris Glass:That's an absolutely staggering number of attendees.
Willie Cecil:For sure.
Chris Glass:So tell me a little bit about yourself. Tell me about your role with and what your background is.
Willie Cecil:Oh, so my background, Chris, is about all about aircraft data and connectivity and how data is used on the aircraft and off the aircraft, and you know I've been in this space for well over 25 years. I started out as an avionics guy and then became more and more involved in aircraft data.
Chris Glass:Excellent. Now at , you're really in the business of modernizing how that data comes off the aircraft and how you can get operational data. Talk to me about that a little bit. Why is that important?
Willie Cecil:Yeah, exactly, modernizing. I see lots of opportunity and at Flyware we've got lots of innovation going on in that space. Because how aircraft data is managed today there's really kind of quite a lot of problems around that. And we talk about aircraft operational data and that means data that's generated by aircraft when they're in operation and there's a lot of data Historically how that data is collected and managed and stuff. I mean, if I use words like Telex, it's essentially a Telex system that's used to move data on and off the aircraft. It's over VHF or narrowband SATCOM, but it's essentially Telex and it's sending text messages to and from the aircraft and people might not believe you outside the industry that that's the case. And then other data is collected by you know people collecting disks and such from the aircraft.
Chris Glass:And I think one thing that has really changed in the modern aircraft is the sheer volume and size of the data coming off the aircraft, when maybe that Telex system could have handled the bandwidth back then, or maybe the card system, where you're pulling off cards and downloading data, could have handled it Now. There's just so much operational data.
Willie Cecil:Well, that's true, but the reality is, though, the system I just mentioned the Telex system, if you will, it's called ACARS Aircraft Communication Addressing and Reporting System was invented in the late 70s. That's the fundamental system that's still used today for moving everything flight plans to the aircraft, um health data from the engines, all the data back and forth from the aircraft is going over that link, and it's literally and the volume is is over that link, and it's literally. The volume is measured in a few megabytes per month per aircraft. It's text message, it's a text message plan, it's expensive, there's only a few service providers in the world that support it, and it has issues going forward because it's used for things for your traffic control communication too. So it's a critically important link, but it's getting congested.
Chris Glass:Yeah.
Willie Cecil:That's a big problem.
Chris Glass:How is this data collected and harvested today? That volume of data makes it difficult. The system constraints make it difficult. How are we managing today? How does that work?
Willie Cecil:Well, I mean, before I get into that, maybe I'll just mention there's like, if I split data into three categories by size, the Telex or ACAR system that I mentioned, it's in the order of a few megabytes a month per aircraft. Then there's something that's been increasingly collected over cellular, over wireless connection, while the aircraft's on the ground. That's called Quick Access Recorder or QAR data. That's been increasingly collected and it's pretty universal. It's wirelessly collected. Now it's in the order of a few gigabytes per month. So it's much bigger. But it couldn't go through a text message pipe, it couldn't go through that, it would cost a fortune. So it's collected over public cellular networks on the ground and that's pretty universal, mostly using 2G, 3G and now some people using 4G.
Willie Cecil:And then the third aircraft operational data type maybe worth mentioning is one of the bigger ones, which is the engine, the full, what they call continuous engine operation data. It's a full FADEC data package, let's say that's measured in gigabytes. You know a lot of gigabytes every day, wow. So you can see you go from a few megabytes a month to a few gigabytes a month. For the third, the second type of data, the QR data I mentioned to, you know, um, a few gigabytes a day, um for an engine download. So the engine download is just not collected. The airlines, I think maybe every two or three weeks they'll do a download, but they'll get two days worth of data.
Chris Glass:Right.
Willie Cecil:Or if there's an incident or an issue that needs to be, you know, a problem detected with an engine, they'll maybe do a download, but they can't. It takes hours. It takes hours to do. You know, some airlines actually bring the aircraft down for a whole day to do the milking of the engine FADEC and they do that every maybe three weeks or something. It's not, it's not ideal.
Chris Glass:Wow.
Willie Cecil:With modernization is a great opportunity.
Chris Glass:Glad you brought up those three separate buckets right, so I want to talk about all three of them and start off by telling me what's wrong with them and why they need to be disrupted, why we need to modernize them. So let's start with the smallest. Let's go with ACARS.
Willie Cecil:Okay for sure. So ACARS is as I mentioned. It's a few megabytes a month, and let's forget about the cost for a minute. One thing about it is it's real-time over the air using VHF, and out of over the ocean it uses Narrowband Satcom.
Chris Glass:Okay.
Willie Cecil:The Innersat or radium SATCOM. So that's how it's done today. Now the issue is that that pipe is something like, I think, 31 kilobits per second, let's say the frequency that's available at an airport, let's say, and that's shared among all aircraft in this space. So the throughput performance is limited. And what's happened, for example, in europe with the congestion there? They've introduced, I think now um multiple, multiple frequencies to increase the throughput, to support the growth in traffic and the growth in the data that's generated on the new aircraft. So that represents a problem, because as aircraft traffic continues to grow and the number of aircraft with new engines grows, then it's going to reach a point where the VHF network can't cope anymore. There'll be a meltdown. And why does that matter? Well, it matters because that network is what's used for air traffic control for.
Willie Cecil:CPDLC, or what they call controller-to-pilot data link communication.
Willie Cecil:It's automated over data link now, over this link, and if the link becomes congested and overloaded then that system breaks down and then the pilots have to revert back to voice and you're looking at delays and you're looking just at a mess in the air traffic world when that happens. So the industry is looking at what they're going to do for the future and I was at the DataLink users forum just back in February and I learned in Europe they have something like 19 initiatives all focused on ways to improve. They call it the network, and a large part of that is the. You know how they can improve things so that the air traffic control communication is not affected and will be good for a long time into the future. So the elephant in the room, or the obvious thing to me, is reduce the usage for things that don't need to go over that link, that's kind of modernization opportunity is offload data from that network that doesn't need to go over that network, and then it frees up capacity for air traffic purposes.
Chris Glass:Now to talk about something that I know a little bit about. In my past, you know, when you talk about the full flight data, the QAR data. Previously at an airline I worked at, we used to pull data cards off every seven days, mail them all around our system, get them back to head office and then try to download data off them. There'd be gaps, there'd be things missed. So I kind of have an idea of what this answer is going to be. But what's wrong with the way that we currently manage QAR and how do we need to look about modernizing it?
Willie Cecil:Okay, so there's a couple of aspects to that. I mean on the it okay, so there's a couple aspects to that. Um. I mean, on the one hand, there's a reducing number of airlines that are still doing what you described manually collecting that data using the pc cards or discs. The number of airlines doing that is reducing all the time it's definitely a minority around the world, um, and the whole thing was driven by actually worth mentioning flight safety mandates, requirements for monitoring of that data and analyzing that data for safety improvement purposes. That's been an ICAO thing for I think, something like 20 years now.
Willie Cecil:So getting better data harvesting, cerel has been been introduced and I was part of that a long time ago and when 2G was state-of-the-art. Um, 2G has been widely used, and then 3G since then and now, most recently, 4G and and finally the aircraft oems are offering they have a 4G capability on new aircraft. So for the airlines that already have something there's airlines that have a, they may have 2G, they may have 3G, they may have 4G and they may have a mix and any new airplanes. They have come with something on the aircraft which may have a fee cost to associate with using it or activating it. But the issue is, if you think about cellular technology, 4G is I think it was 2009,. So something like 16 years old now. 4G has peaked and is actually in decline in a lot of parts of the world. 3G sunset and 2G sunset has happened or is well in progress. It's still used in some countries, obviously, but as those shut down and they predict that I think 2030 is when around about, then, when first 6G services launch, 4G sunset's expect commence. So within five years or so, we'll see the first sunset or shutdowns of 4G.
Willie Cecil:So the modernization that's kind of needed there is that if you've got a new aircraft that you're going to have for 20 years, it's going to need upgraded to 5G.
Willie Cecil:So, and obviously if we have a 5G product which is partly why we're talking about this, but we're offering that product to the airlines so they can adopt 5G right from the get-go on new airplanes and then any airplanes that you know they're operating into the future, then 5G. It's a great opportunity there. Now there is one other thing with the full flight to air data that's a concern is that flight I mentioned flight safety as the primary user and they're in the background as the original user right of the data and sometimes flight safety departments and pilots unions sometimes are the gatekeeper of that data. It depends on the airline in the country, but that data now is used for more advanced engine health monitoring and it's being expanded to add additional data parameters for predictive maintenance. So some of the systems that you address with predictive maintenance, the data is missing so you have to add the missing data on the aircraft side to collect the data you need for the predictive analytics purposes.
Chris Glass:Yeah.
Willie Cecil:And that's a problem. That's one of the things that can be modernized and there are ways to expand that data collection in a kind of universal, easy to you know frictionless let's say easy way, so that you can get all the data you need much more easily.
Chris Glass:Right, and then the last. The last point I wanted to talk about was, uh, that engine data that's coming off the aircraft and and just how much data is is available that currently, right now, may not be looked at. So what's wrong with with engine data right now and why does that need to be disrupted?
Willie Cecil:Well, the issue with the engine data is that it's I think I mentioned already that a full engine download is only done every couple of weeks or something periodically. Or if there's a case where they need the data for support purposes, it's done. And they always don't like to do it because they have to go send a mechanic to the engine, open up the cowl, hook up tools.
Chris Glass:No re ally
Willie Cecil:And there' s two computers on each engine that make up the FADEC. Each one has to be downloaded, it all takes time. And then that file, that data, it's manual, logistics right to manage all that, and human intensive, manpower intensive. So, the opportunity there is to essentially automate that, or something very similar to that, where that data set, which I mentioned before, they call continuous engine operation data, to automate the harvesting of that. And actually there's two kind of ways this could be handled, which we're in a position to help the airlines with one is, and the engine manufacturers for that matter. One is that 5G, for the first time, there's the throughput, the capacity to offload the data volumes that are happening. And some people may say, well, the cost will be horrendous. Well, the cost of cellular data, even roaming, is a fraction of what it used to be, so it's actually not quite
Chris Glass:expense
Willie Cecil:worry that really some people think it might be, so that's really not a concern :
Willie Cecil:So that opportunity there to collect that data every landing, that's one way to think about it. The other way, or one way to do things to get the data going forward, the other way, is to say, okay, maybe I really don't need all that data on an ongoing basis. So what can be done is that data can still be harvested and stored on the aircraft, because the actual FEDEC themselves can only store a few days worth of data and then they overwrite because it generates.
Chris Glass:so much data.
Willie Cecil:So with our 5G product we have a terabyte of storage that we can actually store much more data than the FEDEC can. So we can store an archive, a significant archive of data on board that would be available on demand when and if it was needed, and this kind of stuff is just not in existence right now. Like I said, right now engine data is sent via the ACARS link that I mentioned and that's caused a 10x explosion in the traffic that's generated on an A320 or a 737 with the new engines, and most of that data is not even needed in real time. They're paying real-time prices for data that's not needed in real time, whereas if you said, just imagine you could have full FADEC downloads automatic every landing and if it wasn't cost prohibitive, wouldn't that be a better approach? And nobody's really thinking like this today
Chris Glass:so what?
Chris Glass:what could you do with that data? Like, like, I know it's a big daddy set, but what does that kind of information unlock for a customer?
Willie Cecil:So airlines are often on a power-by-the-air type contract.
Chris Glass:Right.
Willie Cecil:They have the engine as a service. So the first thing we might say is that it eliminates that time spent manually downloading the engines.
Chris Glass:Yeah, somebody has to go to that engine, hook something up and go from there. And that's an FTE, that's a person.
Willie Cecil:Exactly, yeah. And then it also gives the opportunity that the um, the a lot of that, expand that 10X expansion and data that's sent via ACARS, that a big chunk, more than half of that could be cut and help with the CPDLC congestion Right and the VHF congestion for that. And so there's benefits there. There's going to have community benefit and a benefit to the airline from not having to do the full downloads. And then finally, which is a huge benefit, there's maintenance reserves and there's a big benefit potentially to the engine manufacturer.
Willie Cecil:That's when there's an issue and they need to investigate something that the data is at their fingertips Today. They have to if they detect an issue from the messages that are sent via ACARS, those text messages. If they detect an issue, then they'll ask the airline to send mechanics to go do a full download and then send them those gigabytes of data and they'll take a look at them. But then they're also using, you know, advanced analytic, you know machine learning models that are doing kind of more predictive engine health monitoring too.
Chris Glass:Right.
Willie Cecil:So the expanded data set or the ability to utilize more data like that enables those things in a new, new way, or it could enable uh things in a new way and, like I said, nobody's really thinking too much about it because if you ask most people in the industry, they they'll tell you that it's not possible, um, that the data is encrypted, therefore you can't do anything and the bandwidth is not good enough. The cost would be too much and all of these things are actually they were true in the past and the data is encrypted when you do a full FADEC download, but anything that harvests full engine data is going to be in concert with the engine manufacturer.
Chris Glass:Yeah.
Willie Cecil:Right, so the solution would be acceptable, I think, all around for everyone involved.
Chris Glass:You've talked a little bit about how 5G is the future. You know hearing that you kind of touched on it a little bit earlier about the 4G network being sunset. But could all of this quick access recorder and engine data daily dumps be done over the 4G network or would there be congestion issues? Would it take too long to download that kind of thing?
Willie Cecil:5G obviously has the advantage that it's something that people are going to need around about five years from now and going forward, depending which part of the world you're in. But back to your question really about 4G and could it do it? The answer is the latest generation 4G feasibly could, but there's a couple of issues. The equipment that's on the aircraft today, that's 4G, is not integrated or connected to get this engine data. That's the first thing. The second thing is my understanding anyway, is that the generation of 4G, those systems have been around for a little while. Our product at FLYHT is really recent and just the last two or three years. The other system has been around for quite a few years and the cellular technology that's used in those is often, I think, an old 4G standard. So the latest 4G advanced speeds that are possible I think a lot of the systems that are out there don't support those speeds.
Chris Glass:So you're really left with a choice of upgrading to a 4G the most modern 4G which will be sunset in five years anyway or a 5G solution.
Willie Cecil:Well, I may even say there is no 4G advanced solution, as far as I know,
Chris Glass:Okay
Willie Cecil:Anyway. So the existing 4G systems just suffer from one they're not integrated necessarily. In some cases they might be, but then, even if they are, they don't have the throughput needed. So something is needed anyway.
Chris Glass:Right.
Willie Cecil:So that's where something like our 5G product can plug into this problem space and solve it for the first time.
Chris Glass:That's excellent. Now I hear stories coming out of Europe of airlines setting up private 5G or airports setting up private 5G networks. Can you talk about that for a little bit?
Willie Cecil:For sure. So I think the first private cellular network I heard about was actually 4G, and that's interesting because it was actually in France at Charles de Gaulle and Orly Airport. The airline there was using Wi-Fi gate link, and using Wi-Fi gate link was considered to be the way forward for many years, until relatively recently, but the cost was prohibitive to manage essentially a Wi-Fi access point to every gate.
Willie Cecil:So the airline moved to cellular. But then they discovered that in peak times and a lot of times during the airport operation throughout the day, the performance of the cellular network which is too bad on the public cellular network Because you had everybody in the terminals playing.
Chris Glass:Angry Birds or whatever.
Willie Cecil:Air France have had, I think for a while, been able to take advantage of a private 4G network for operational purposes, which is a cool thing. But so that was the first. But since then, and that was quite a few years ago 5G is out and what happens with private networks is there's spectrum that you can use and governments approve use of different spectrum. It seems going forward. I think it's mostly good. All the private activity I I think now is 5G and it's interesting you said Europe, because actually there's a lot going on here in phase two Dallas, fort Worth, miami, they're all deploying private 5G networks. So what that means is a system like ours. You've kind of got a possibility, if you use those networks, to provide a guaranteed performance even during peak time, because that network's dedicated for operational purposes at the airport, the primary use cases, like the Zebra, baggage scanners and even cameras at the gate. There's lots of use cases for the private 5G, operational use cases for it. But connecting the aircraft is again that's one of the things that not really many people are talking about but that we're in a position to help with and it's interesting. Maybe I'll mention this too.
Willie Cecil:A little plug for the Mobile World Congress starting last fall in Las Vegas was the very first Smart Airport Summit, where 5G is a big aspect of that conference, and then in Barcelona last month they had the second one. So I think that's going to continue. I think it's growing and lots of airlines participate in that. What private 5G airports could mean for them?
Chris Glass:So it seems like airports are moving in this connected airports way, with baggage scanners, cameras at the gate, cameras that are doing facial recognition as people board the aircraft. You know, making everything modern and the airports are connected. Why is it that it's taking so long for the aircraft to be connected into that system and that ecosystem?
Willie Cecil:Okay, so it's an interesting thing. So an airplane is, uh, you know, a big, very expensive asset and it has a lot of technology on board, right, but it's not an office. You can't just walk in and send people in to go install a new network or new hardware. So the change process and the change management there's a lot of regulatory oversight on. You know, to put a piece of equipment like ours on an aircraft requires a lot of hoops to jump through.
Chris Glass:Right.
Willie Cecil:Which is why, for example, it would be really hard to use any technology that's less than a couple of years old, because the process to get it qualified to go on the aircraft takes that long.
Willie Cecil:It needs to be certified and qualified for use on an aircraft. So I guess the public can be assured of safety there, that there isn't just willy-nilly aircraft or security risk potential, because everything gets a lot of scrutiny before it gets on the aircraft. So that's why the kind of last mile they sometimes call it with the connection to the aircraft is the last thing to see, to see changes, or that the airline industry is one of the places to be the last to catch up because of that process of change management.
Chris Glass:Yeah, it seems like I could get more data off my car than I can off my 737 easily.
Willie Cecil:That's another factor too is the investment to create products for aircraft that are in avionics, systems that get installed in aircraft. You know, I don't know. Let's say there's 25 000 aircraft in the world, right? That means if you had a product and you had 100 market success, you would only ever sell 25 000 units yeah, so the market.
Willie Cecil:So when you compare it with the automotive space, with cars um, or the consumer worl d,
Chris Glass:yeah, the incentive is different
Willie Cecil:I compare right there's a lot of investment needed um relatively
Willie Cecil:Now, every time I get uh somebody who I consider an expert uh in a certain subject, I like to ask them about some myths out in the industry. So, uh, I had, um uh a couple of shows ago, uh somebody talking about contrails and of course contrails are evil and seeding the clouds and all of that stuff in in the uh in the world of conspiracy theories. 5G has a lot of conspiracy theory uh stuff around it too. So I was hoping you could debunk some of the myths out there and uh talk about 5G and and why it's safe and why it's here to stay.
Willie Cecil:Well, you know, I guess the radio altimeter issue was the thing that flared up, you know just when 5G, C-band, so that was the issue, I think. When was it? Back in 2022, I think, end of 21, 22, when in the States it was particularly in the States where the issue came up, because I think there was lack of planning between the FCC and the FAA of what was going on. But the bottom line was the government sold, the FCC sold spectrum to all the cellular networks for a lot of money for what's called C-band frequencies, which have much higher capacity and throughput than the more frequency bands.
Willie Cecil:And some of that C-band frequency is just right next to the radio-alternator frequency band. So what's happened since then? There was all kinds of mitigations put in place because all the shallow networks have paid so much money for that spectrum to now say don't turn it on.
Chris Glass:Yeah.
Willie Cecil:So what happened was they agreed to not turn it on immediately at the airports around the airports and they adjusted the power levels, and they only did it in coordination. So there was a lot of coordination, I think in the industry, in the telecom industry and the aviation industry working together, there was a lot of coordination so that it was a gradual change. And what happened in parallel was bandpass filters were introduced onto the aircraft to protect the radio altimeter from those frequencies.
Chris Glass:Okay
Willie Cecil:and or radio altimeters that were a lot of radio altimeters were already resistant or not affected by any spillover on the frequency bands, and so I think that issue is really behind us.
Willie Cecil:I don't think we ever see in the press, so it's kind of a historical thing that happened, but the one thing about it, though, is as 5G, or even more, actually, 6G. So there are even already things going on where they're looking at 6G frequencies, because it affects other aviation systems at airports, like radars. So they're already looking into those things to make sure that this, this fiasco that happened, doesn't happen again, and, and the rest of the world, for the most part, I think, made plans so that it wasn't an issue. It was really just in the US. It was a big, a big fuss, big problem.
Chris Glass:I'll give you a chance to close by telling me what a fully connected aircraft can do for an airline. So if all things were perfect and you had a 5G in your case, an Edge Plus box on an aircraft, what does that look like for an airline for operational uh use in a perfect world?
Willie Cecil:Well, let me just say something about connected aircraft before I answer that Um traditionally, when the word connected aircraft is used, in reality, what it, what people are talking about, is the internet connection that passengers have, um, so that's kind of where that term has been used. But what's um? What does it mean to an? Is the internet connection that passengers have, so that's kind of where that term has been used. But what does it mean to an airline? And what is it in my world?
Willie Cecil:or let's say in the operations world is about the connectivity for the crew, the connectivity for the aircraft systems and in flight and on the ground, in a new way that's kind of modernized, like some of the stuff that we were talking about already. So what does that mean? To have a connected aircraft where you get all the data you need on an ongoing basis. You get full FADEC downloads, you get all this data, it's all enabled and you have data for applications on the EFB, the electronic flight bag or iPad in the aircraft. All of those things.
Willie Cecil:they all result in operational improvements and efficiency improvements and the ability to predict disruptions, whether it's a maintenance or operational disruption, and improving turnaround times, which you know that topic well right when, when, um, all those things, uh, as a passenger I guess that's the one way to think about it is, in the future, the type when you show up at the gate, you show up, uh, when you arrive early at an airport, you're not sitting for half an hour waiting for the gate to open. Or with predictive maintenance. It was quoted actually by Delta this week at the conference that the vision is that unscheduled maintenance will be a thing of the past.
Willie Cecil:Wow, there may be some oddballs of things, but the idea is that everything and it's already happening right. There's a lot of this already in place where, if you've got the right data and the right tools in place, that you can identify systems that are failing before they've actually failed and you're able to schedule that maintenance and get it done when it's convenient and cost effective.
Chris Glass:So I'm hearing you say a hundred percent guarantee that you will have no unscheduled maintenance. Is that what I'm hearing?
Willie Cecil:I wouldn't quite exactly.
Chris Glass:But that's the goal. That's the stretch goal.
Willie Cecil:Compared to today, for sure. So anyway, just as an example there's, this year with predictive maintenance, in Montreal, IATA has got a workshop with nine airlines presenting what they've done so far, including Delta and EasyJet.
Chris Glass:All right. So you mentioned predictive maintenance. What are airlines doing with predictive maintenance?
Willie Cecil:So good question, and the answer actually varies from absolutely nothing to a whole lot of stuff. Okay, you know, you've got folks like I don't know, just off the top of my head, like Delta or EJET, at one end of the spectrum, and I don't want to mention any of the other end of the spectrum. But there's a lot of things going on, but just maybe worth mentioning that IATA has established something called the Predictive Maintenance Workshop for airlines.
Chris Glass:Excellent.
Willie Cecil:That's going to be winning in June 10th to 12th in Montreal. So that's cool. I think there's going to be like nine airlines besides Delta and EasyJet there's quite a few others going to be presenting what they've done. Oh, wow, there's going to be some educational stuff about predictive maintenance that IATA has organized. And then on the third day there's various other things like, for example, Lufthansa Technic will be presenting their Aviator product.
Willie Cecil:So other players in the market I'll be talking about. So that's going to be an exciting conference and that's product. So other you know other players in the market I'll be talking about. So, um, you know that that's going to be an exciting conference and that's just the first one this year. Um, there's another thing called the predictive aircraft maintenance PAM conference. That's been running a couple of years now, um or more. Uh, it's running again this year. Uh, it's in Dublin in November. So we'll be at that conference, but then, because of the success of that conference, they're launching one in Singapore in September. So there's three predictive maintenance events just in the next six or seven months or so.
Chris Glass:So it's a growing space right now.
Willie Cecil:For sure, for sure. There's a lot of activity and a lot of discussion about, and at this conference this week there was a lot of talk about that. You know what's being done, what people are working with. You know, for example, in Embraer we're talking, together with AWS, about how they're using AWS technology within their digital transformation and within Embraer services.
Chris Glass:Oh, wow.
Willie Cecil:So there's a lot of discussion, a lot of presentations went on and I think the technology is one thing, the aircraft data harvesting is another, and then the domain knowledge and how it's all brought together. You know, these conferences, I think, are great and the IATA workshop for airlines to learn from each other and it's only going to get better and looking forward to it.
Chris Glass:Willie, thank you so much for coming on the show. I really appreciate the time you spent with us. Where can people find more about the Edge Plus?
Willie Cecil:Well, of course, on our website at FLYTH. com, and of course they can reach out to me on LinkedIn or any of the team.
Chris Glass:And thank you so much for spending some time with us today in The Jump Seat. We'll be back with more great episodes coming up soon.
