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ATLANTA—Artificial intelligence (AI) in the maintenance, repair and overhaul (MRO) sector offers opportunity to adapt to a significant constraint, suggest industry stakeholders—namely, a shortage in skilled talent.
“There’s one key area that happened during COVID, which is we had a shortage of talent and surprisingly even the new talent are not joining aviation—so I think that’s where we can help with AI,” said Tulika Dayal, chief experience officer and co-founder of SkySelect, at Aviation Week Network’s MRO Americas in Atlanta. SkySelect is an AI company in the supply chain, now making inroads into avoiding unplanned downtime.
Helping small teams do more by automating repetitive tasks and delegating so-called “grunt work” to the technology could better utilize existing staffing capacity, and perhaps better prepare for a new normal, Dayal said.
“Humans, we want to believe we are good with multitasking, but we really aren’t,” Dayal said. “The AI can work 24/7 and take over the grunt work and then allow the human to focus on strategic work—like negotiation, vendor management, work with maintenance teams on how to avoid downtime ... I think that’s where the big opportunity is.”
At the same time, for those newer MRO professionals who are choosing the aviation industry, AI presents an attractive tool for a generation used to having a multitude of information at the fingertips—and at speed.
“The new workforce is different, they want faster data in their hands and that’s what AI does,” said Miguel Sosa, VP of product and software development at Trax. “It’s not only proven by the customers, it's also driven by the new generation of workers; we have to adapt to how they want to work.”
According to the 2024 Pipeline Report by the Aviation Technician Education Council, the number of incoming new mechanics will be insufficient to meet the commercial aviation’s projected replacement needs for a retirement bubble over the next decade. It estimates the current shortage at 9%, projecting it to reach nearly 20% by 2028.
As retirements take place, “you have younger technicians that are coming in, greener technicians that are coming in, and I think AI is useful in upskilling those technicians,” adds Joseph Hernandez, VP of technology at FEAM Aero. In that way he suggests they can be upskilled “in a much faster manner, giving them access to historical records that show them how to reach a resolution in a much more timely manner.”
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