Malaysian Airline System (MAS) opted out of a Boeing Co. service to collect real-time performance data from jets like Flight 370 for use in planning maintenance, according to a person familiar with the matter.
The carrier harvests the same information itself, said the person, who asked not to be identified because Flight 370 is under investigation. The search for the missing Boeing 777-200 entered a fifth day today, leaving investigators baffled at the lack of details on what was happening on the plane when radar contact was lost on March 8.
Having Boeing's Airplane Health Management program potentially would have provided a backup to the airline's own surveillance of the plane, said David Greenberg, a former operations executive at Delta Air Lines. Boeing pulls in that information to mine data and help airlines spot mechanical faults early, providing carriers another window on their operations.
"It's like having a cell phone right next to your desk next to your landline," Greenberg, who is now a Chicago-based consultant, said in a telephone interview.
Onboard computers track performance of pivotal airplane systems and send the information to airlines through a messaging technology known as the Aircraft Communications Addressing and Reporting System, or ACARS. Boeing taps the same computer data via satellite links for subscribers to its service.
About 75 percent of Boeing 777s, the planemaker's biggest twin-engine model, use the maintenance and monitoring program, according to a 2013 company presentation.
Airlines get "a set of predefined prognostic monitors and alerts that trigger prior to system failures," covering components as varied as the engines and air conditioning, according to a Boeing fact sheet for its maintenance program.
A spokesman for Malaysian Air referred questions about the in-flight communications system to a company statement, in which the carrier said all contact was lost with Flight 370 as it approached Vietnamese airspace. The airline didn't immediately respond when asked about the Boeing program.
"All Malaysia Airlines aircraft are equipped with continuous data monitoring system called the Aircraft Communications Addressing and Reporting System (ACARS) which transmits data automatically," the carrier said. "Nevertheless, there were no distress calls and no information was relayed."
Wilson Chow, a spokesman for Chicago-based Boeing, declined to comment about Malaysian Air in a phone interview.
For airlines in the Boeing program, data from onboard systems and engines are sent to the carriers' ground operations, and the planemaker also prepares alerts and reports on "important maintenance-related events."
Services such as Boeing's "are not designed to be inflight advisory systems," said R. John Hansman, professor of aeronautics and astronautics at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "They are really designed to be post-flight maintenance systems."
(Julie Johnsson and Mary Schlangenstein - Bloomberg)
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