Part 66 licensed engineers are a fundamental aspect of aerospace safety. However, as we’ve previously discussed, there is currently a skills and manpower shortage in the industry. Licensed engineers already have a lot of responsibility, and this issue is only going to become more obvious as the workforce shrinks.
Might this be an area where the introduction of AI is actually beneficial? If so, how could AI make licensed engineering more efficient? Let’s take a look.
Discussing AI often comes with a lot of anxiety over its potential to take jobs. While this is arguably true in some industries, aircraft maintenance will be fairly safe from this purge, at least for a long time. AI in its current form is nowhere near consistent enough to fully replace humans in such a critical industry.
Instead, we will see AI supplementing the roles of engineers and maintenance crews, which is where it really shines. Carefully written algorithms can predict faults and failures before they happen, giving engineers ample opportunity to resolve potential issues. This, if nothing else, will help engineers because it’ll push maintenance more towards proactive than reactive.
Similarly, AI has a lot of potential for image recognition with greater clarity than a person could achieve. In aerospace, it could detect issues faster and more efficiently than the human eye.
We can also look at the theoretical implications of AI. For example, AI can discover new materials at a far greater rate than people, and this logic can be applied to the world of aircraft maintenance. It could provide answers on regulations, repair strategies, replacement materials, and more, all of which will save valuable time.
It’s not unreasonable to say that AI holds a lot of potential for aircraft maintenance. Its power lies in prediction and recognition, which will save engineers a lot of time and free them up from what could be considered the repetitive parts of their jobs.
After all, this is what current AI is best at: freeing up time from mundane tasks. While it’s potentially unreasonable to class any aspect of aircraft maintenance as mundane, this is the best way to categorise the type of work AI will do (and does in other industries).
In aircraft maintenance, for example, AI could help with troubleshooting, inspection, prediction, and idea generation. These are aspects of the job that can be repeated and taught to a computer, allowing humans to focus on the parts of the job that require free thinking, critical observation, and variation.
We can’t overlook the potential of AI in engineer training, though. Virtual training would be ideal for testing real-life scenarios before an engineer steps into the field, and augmented reality could provide repair guides and maintenance manuals projected onto glasses or the aircraft itself to aid work on-site.
The bottom line is that AI will bring change to Part 66 licensed engineering, just as it has in other critical industries. However, it’ll be a positive shift intended to make engineers’ lives easier, rather than AI stealing jobs. The current state of AI and its relatively limited scope means we won’t put aircraft safety entirely in its control.
Instead, engineers can use it to enhance their productivity and reduce their focus on repetitive aspects of their roles. Hopefully, this will ease some of the pressure on the industry and allow engineers to do more with less.
