Emirates uses RFID technology to track airborne emergency equipment to improve machine inspection efficiency

Other airlines have also been using RFID technology to track emergency equipment, but Emirates has completed RFID scanning to identify the largest number of airborne emergency equipment, more than 250 aircraft and 133,000 life jackets. Importantly, RFID helps engineering teams maintain the entire emergency equipment with 100% data integrity and compliance and deliver accurate inventory forecasts with greater efficiency.

Ahmed Safa, senior vice president of the Emirates Aviation Division, said: We are always looking for technologies and applications that improve compliance, increase efficiency, ensure employee safety and ultimately profitability. Our team is introducing a device for tracking emergency equipment. RFID technology is very proud, because RFID meets our strict safety standards; RFID minimizes the challenges of our large business and team; RFID expands the enthusiasm and skills of our employees. The joint efforts of multiple teams, This led to the great success of this project."

Scale:An aircraft usually has about 30 different emergency items, including life jackets, baby life beds, defibrillators, first aid kits, fire extinguishers, medical kits, oxygen cylinders, generators, and respiratory protection equipment. Emirates has a total of approximately 180,000 emergency equipment.

There are 820 emergency equipment on an Airbus A380 aircraft, which used to take 350 minutes for manual inspections and 112 aircraft for Emirates fleet. At the same time, Emirates Airlines has 144 Boeing 777 aircraft, each with 540 emergency equipment and 270 minutes for manual inspection.

Now, thanks to the application of RFID technology, Emirates Airlines can scan an A380 in 11 minutes, saving 97% of the time, while Boeing 777 takes only 6 minutes, saving 98% of the time.

Intelligent:RFID has dramatically changed the nature of employees' work, increased the company's overall resource efficiency, and saved millions of dollars annually. Emirates Airlines has more than 1,800 mechanics trained in aircraft scanning.

Before applying RFID, in order to confirm the availability of the life jacket, the mechanic was asked to check the stowage under each passenger seat separately. The stowage range on the A380 ranged from 489 to 615, and the stowage on the Boeing 777 ranged from 354~. 428 does not wait and actually reads the identification tag. Now, all life jackets and emergency equipment are tagged with RFID tags. A mechanic only needs to carry a handheld that receives all the data through the cabin. The data will be uploaded to the cloud and then on any device. For the team to scan for reading.