Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, commercial aviation has been constantly rising but the pandemic resulted in a dip in air traffic in 2020. However, post-COVID air traffic has caught up to pre-COVID levels, based on data in global air travel by the World Bank and air passenger traffic in India from 2020 to 2023 by Statista
- Supply Chain Problems - Aerospace companies are struggling to meet the increasing aviation demand. This is largely because of how conservative they are, which is seen in their reluctance to upgrade their systems
- Longer Lead Times - There’s currently a long-winded process for prototyping of aircraft systems, certifying them in terms of safety and operability, and bringing them into commercial operation.
- Talent Shortage - The A&D industry requires a lot of generalists. There isn’t much focus on interdisciplinary thinking and people are only hyperfocusing on specific career paths. It also doesn’t help that A&D employees and underpaid and overworked
Real Life Examples and Case Studies
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Issues with Pratt & Whitney engines in IndiGo A321 Neo aircraft - A series of In-Flight Shut Downs (IFSDs) in August-September 2023 concerning 2 A321 Neo and 1 A320 Neo aircraft — all of them were powered by jet engines supplied by Pratt & Whitney — led to P&W’s parent company, RTX grounding 600 to 700 of their engines (200 engines have been removed). This caused IndiGo to ground 40 of its aircraft. Mark D Martin, MRAes founder and CEO of Martin Consulting says that the issues with P&W engines have been there for five years and this is more of an engine issue than a supply chain issue. I personally think this is equally a supply chain problem because the distribution of these engines, their installation, and testing is all a part of it
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FAA’s NOTAM software - The FAA maintains 30-year old NOTAM software, which is 6 years behind its scheduled upgrading. Issues with NOTAM (Notices to Air Missions) systems led to a nationwide ground stop of US flight departures between 7:30 am and 9 am ET on January 11, 2023. 32578 flights were delayed due to this. What exactly happened? The FAA reported database malfunctions in the NOTAM system that surfaced due to employees not following protocols. One employee had mistakenly replaced a file with a different one, causing the issue. This incident provided the impetus for FAA to upgrade all their outdated NOTAM database systems and revamp existing protocols
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Holiday meltdown by Southwest Airlines - A holiday meltdown on December 2022 led to a class-action lawsuit being filed against Southwest Airlines due to severe storms. It so turned out that they were using software that dated to the 1990s. That was exacerbated by scheduling system problems and Southwest’s aggressive flight scheduling. They relied extremely on non-stop routes, which are sitting ducks for interruptions that can cause chaos
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Why India’s aviation sector is facing more turbulence - National News