AkzoNobel Aerospace Coatings has announced that the company will launch Aerofleet Coatings Management, a new digital, data-driven service that helps airlines and other large operators to tailor and optimize the coatings’ replacement and maintenance schedule for individual aircraft within an airline fleet. External coatings have evolved rapidly in the last decade from single-stage to basecoat/clearcoat systems, extending the need to repaint some aircraft for up to ten years or even more. Despite these changes, aircraft still tend to be taken out of service for maintenance every six or seven years without really knowing if a repaint is needed.
Aerofleet Coatings Management addresses this issue by capturing the data from both manual inspections and drone-operated inspections, creating a database of every aircraft in a fleet. The history includes details of the coatings used (e.g. single or basecoat/clearcoat coatings) along with flight path data (e.g. weather conditions etc.) that affect the integrity/longevity of the coating applied.