7 March, 2019: CHC Helicopter, a helicopter services company has received the first H175 helicopter with digital logcards. Airbus Helicopters is the first helicopter manufacturing company on the market to transform paper-based logcards into easy-to-use digital data.
The H175s are currently operated by CHC in the North Sea: one in Norwich, England and three in Aberdeen, Scotland.
With the all-new digital logcard, functions such as ability to attach documents, archive, search, and immediately transfer a selection of logcards are easily possible. In future, applications such as the ability to synchronise data between the digital logcard system and customers’ Maintenance Information Systems (MIS), or to build new analytics around the collected data will be added.
“A logcard is a document that tracks the entire history of critical helicopter parts, from manufacture all along their in-service lives. There are around 2.5 million logcards already in circulation throughout the world today, with some 80,000 new ones being produced each year,” said Matthieu Louvot, Executive Vice President of Customer Support & Services at Airbus Helicopters. “Our new digital version stores the content in a secured cloud while preserving the existing template, using the same process and stakeholder roles and responsibilities as the paper version, meaning no additional workload.”
“The digital logcards allow us to take better care of ourselves and our customers,” said Sean Toth, Director of Global Maintenance and Engineering at CHC Helicopter, which took delivery of its fourth H175 in January and will convert its paper logcards to the electronic format in April. “Thanks to them we can better ensure overall compliance, while our staff improves productivity as our logcards are updated in real time.”
The digital logcard is a result of a collaborative effort involving Airbus customers and repair centres, who were consulted during development and acted as early adopters, participating in a year-long pilot phase.
“The feedback we received from our pilot users indicates that digital logcards meets our objectives of delivering better data quality, smoother processes, time savings, reliability and data confidentiality,” said Stephanie Bonnefoy-Fourie, who leads Airbus Helicopters’ Connected Services business.
All Airbus customers taking delivery of a new civil helicopter from April 2019 can opt to receive digital logcards at no additional cost. Also, customers with existing paper logcards can convert theirs to the digital format.