Operators use various maintenance planning concepts, however, none of these concepts really takes the flight program into account. Common maintenance concepts such as block programs are easy to schedule, but take an aircraft out of service for some time. Equalized programs break up large inspections but they can introduce excessive access and preparation times.

NLR develops a maintenance planning concept that solves these issues. Our FlexPlan:

  • Reads a Maintenance Planning Document, interprets the applicability of individual tasks and creates an operator specific Aircraft Maintenance Program automatically
  • Creates small packages of tasks, optimally clustered to minimise access and preparation times
  • Assigns the packages to maintenance slots based on the flight schedule
  • Updates the maintenance slots if last-minute changes in the flight schedule occur.

Our FlexPlan only uses readily available information, namely a Maintenance Planning Document, the aircraft maintenance status, the aircraft configuration, a flight schedule, and a list of maintenance facilities.

We then use an automated workflow to dissect the Maintenance Planning Document, create packages, schedule these packages and update the schedule if required.

FlexPlan makes extensive use of Artificial Intelligence to optimise the packages, schedule these packages and update the schedule.

The result is a comprehensive maintenance program, with packages that minimise access and preparation times, that schedules maintenance around your flight schedule, and is sufficiently robust to facilitate last-minute changes to the maintenance schedule if your flight schedule is disrupted.

And the best thing is, it is all done automatically; you do not need to spend time on an operator specific Aircraft Maintenance Program or maintenance scheduling. It is all done for you. And since FlexPlan adheres to the task intervals specified by the original equipment manufacturer, you do not face regulatory issues.