Airbus Paris Air Show 2017 highlights

An electric taxiing solution, called eTaxi, has received Airbus and Safran authorization-to-market approval for the A320 family. Allowing the program to be launched soon. Electric motors in the main landing gear, powered by electricity from the auxiliary power unit (APU), would allow an aircraft fitted with it to taxi without using its jet engines or requiring airport tractors or tugs. Benefits are a reduction of around 4% in fuel costs, independent movement on the ground (saving around 2 minutes on pushback), reduced carbon and NOx emissions, and less noise during taxiing.

DHL Express has ordered an additional four firm and 10 optional A330-300 passenger-to-freighter (P2F) conversions from Elbe Flugzeugwerke (EFW), the joint venture between ST Aerospace and Airbus. This follows the launch contract for four similar A330-300P2F conversions that was also awarded by DHL Express last July. The first aircraft under the launch contract is currently undergoing conversion at EFW’s Dresden, Germany, facilities, and is on track to be redelivered by the end of 2017. 

Airbus has chosen Rockwell Collins for the flight operations and maintenance exchanger (FOMAX) program on the Airbus A320 family of aircraft. FOMAX is a compact connectivity unit which collects aircraft maintenance and performance data and automatically sends it to ground-based operations and to mobile applications used by flight crews. The unit also sends data automatically into efficiency applications such as weather, flight planning, logbooks, maintenance prediction and performance calculators, all for improved productivity. FOMAX provides secure crew Wi-Fi connectivity on the aircraft, cellular, and terminal networks. It interfaces with all major SATCOM connectivity types and is a key airborne component of Airbus’ Skywise aviation data platform, launched at Le Bourget.

Global mobile satellite communications provider Inmarsat has agreed to offer Airbus its new European Aviation Network (EAN) inflight broadband service. Under the partnership, Airbus will offer airlines a specialist retrofit solution to deploy EAN, an integrated satellite and air-to-ground broadband network, for European A320 family aircraft. 

Malaysia Airlines signed two Flight Hour Services (FHS) components support agreements with Airbus for its new fleet of six A350 XWB and existing fleet of 18 A330s. These long-term agreements cover guaranteed spare parts availability.Chilean low-cost airline JetSMART has signed a Flight Hour Services - Tailored Support Package (FHS-TSP) contract with Airbus for full components support and technical management services for its new A320 family aircraft. This 5-year FHS-TSP contract guarantees spare parts availability through line replaceable units (LRUs), components repair, transportation, and expendables provisioning. Fleet technical management (FTM) services offer expertise to optimize aircraft maintenance and engineering operations. Airbus FHS contracts now cover more than 372 aircraft.

Interjet has become a customer for Airbus’ Maintenance Mobility offering, including electronic job cards and predictive risk management services. Maintenance Mobility allows airline mechanics to have technical information on iPads and job cards with electronic signature, eliminating paper. The agreement with Interjet integrates the services into the airline’s information systems, including the maintenance information system (MIS), as well as the software and data hosting.