Airbus has placed a multi-year order to equip its A350XWB fleet with radio frequency identification tags (RFID) for flyable components.
 
Chip developer Tego, Inc., of Waltham, MA., and Paris-based MAINtag SAS will provide two designs of their jointly developed “FLYtag” product line, initially to tag some 1,500 parts on the new widebody. Tego is supplying the eight Kbyte memory chip specified by Airbus, which is designed to the Air Transport Association (ATA) Spec 2000 data standard. MAINtag provides the tags, conforming to the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) AS5678 aerospace standard.
 
The order, announced Jan. 19, was described as a pioneering effort to introduce RFID tracking on aircraft. Airbus currently reports 505 orders for three variants of the A350, potentially representing hundreds of thousands of RFID tags.
 
“What Airbus has done here is provide a contract vehicle and a pricing model to allow the industry to get up and running pretty seamlessly without having to use a lot of contractual activities to make the whole thing work,” said Timothy Butler, Tego president and CEO.
 
RFID uses radio frequency waves to transfer data between a reader and tagged components. The tags developed for use on aircraft are “passive,” without a dedicated power supply. The A350 will be the first Airbus aircraft to use the passive RFID tags on flyable parts. Boeing has said it will use RFID tags for “maintenance-specific parts” on the Boeing 787 Dreamliner.
 
Airbus on Nov. 26 introduced a maintenance, repair and overhaul strategy supporting RFID adoption for “value chain visibility,” with tracing of both flyable and non-flyable components over their total lifecycle.
 
The RFID tags on flyable parts will support improved aircraft configuration management and line maintenance, repair shop optimization, warehouse logistics, payload tracking and life-limited parts monitoring, the companies said.
 
“Broadly speaking what they’re looking to do is tag both pressurized and non-pressurized flyable parts,” Butler said. “Pressurized flyable parts are inside the cabin – initially avionics equipment, audio visual equipment, seats, materials, life-limited parts like oxygen generators, potentially life vests where there’s not as much information required but there’s a need to maintain reporting requirements.
 
“In non-pressurized areas, you’re talking about major repair and overhaul areas [such as] jet engines, the wings, major components and subassemblies of those components,” he said. “It’s really permeating throughout the whole plane itself.”
 
Butler said Tego has started shipping memory chips to MAINtag. The tagging of components is expected to begin later this year and 2011. The A350 is expected to enter service in 2013.

Bill Carey, editor-in-chief of Avionics magazine, has 25 years of experience as a business, technology and aviation journalist with daily newspapers, newsletters and magazines. He previously served as managing editor of Avionics magazine and as European Bureau Chief for Avionics and Rotor & Wing in London from 1993 to 1995.

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