Blockchain in Aerospace: Reducing Costs & Enhancing Efficiency

The aerospace industry deals with countless different areas. It involves maintenance, inspection, repairs, and supply chain, and most of these records are written on paper and spread across, and isolated in, multiple parties and systems — which creates longer waiting times, excessive rectification procedures, duplicated information, and many other issues. Blockchain can be the answer to keep all this in place, digitally.

“Blockchain has the power to create a digital ‘birth certificate’ for every part that’s installed in a plane and update it every time the plane is serviced or inspected”

Data for the life of the aircraft, PWC

In 2019, PWC released a paper explaining how blockchain can become a great asset when it comes to data and information centralization in the aerospace industry. Blockchain became a buzzword with the rise of cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, but this technology enables much more than digital transactions. Simply put, this tech provides records in an immutable and public digital ledger that can be accessed by authorized people — thus enabling specific personnel to know when a certain part was installed, or when the most recent inspection of an aircraft was made, among so many other important things.

All of this in the comfort of an office or even your own home. Blockchain would also allow to keep some of this information transparent, and other confidential via different protocols. Imagine creating a birth certificate for each airplane part where data such as tail and serial numbers, manufacturer, and date of last inspection would be available to everyone with authorization access. The identity of technicians, location of inspection, and other private details would be kept confidential, and only available to certain people.

According to the PwC document, “efficiency gains enabled by blockchain could increase industry revenue by as much as 4%, or US$40bn, while cutting MRO [maintenance, repair, and operations] costs by about 5%, or US$3.5bn”.

Pro-Environment & Pro-Flyers

In a more recent article, Mesbah Sabur also underlined the benefits of employing blockchain in this industry, focusing on an interesting point: sustainability and communication with consumers: passengers could scan QR codes inside planes to know more information about how companies are incorporating ecological and pro-environment measures: “This can enable all the parties in the aviation industry to engage with passengers and raise awareness of how the industry is contributing to positive environmental impact”.

Advancements in blockchain technology are happening every day and positively affecting countless areas. Although crypto is the most hyped blockchain-related issue nowadays, there are many other areas and use cases where blockchain can really come in handy — aerospace is one of them. From gaming to solar power, engineering to aerospace, there’s a whole world to explore with blockchain.

Creating your own blockchain-based application with Integritee

Some blockchain projects aim for specific areas, namely dealing with cryptocurrency and establishing trading companies. Others, like Integritee, have a wide enough scope to cover almost any use case you can think of, but also target companies, and developers looking for very special features.

Integritee caters to developers and companies who value security — besides our L2 solution designed for people who want to build web3 solutions with an added layer of security, we’ve also been creating and releasing other services. Our SDK allows you to build blockchain apps on our sidechains, thus empowering you and your ideas with low latency, scalability, and confidentiality. Know more here.

One of our other services is the Attesteer, our novel decentralized remote attestation service, which is ideal for those building with Trusted Execution Environments and looking for public auditability without having to resort to third parties. If you want to know more about the Attesteer, and how it works, check here.

Be it aerospace bureaucracy, establishing a clinical trial partnership between a country’s hospitals and pharmaceutical, or developing a new app to deliver food to the elderly, Integritee can help you achieve your goals.