UK: British airline is investigating the use of drones to inspect planes which may have been damaged after flying into birds or being hit by lightning

Record ID: 184943

  • Title: UK: British airline is investigating the use of drones to inspect planes which may have been damaged after flying into birds or being hit by lightning
  • Date: 28th May 2014
  • Summary: LUTON, ENGLAND, UNITED KINGDOM (RECENT) (REUTERS) (SOUNDBITE) (English) HEAD OF AERIAL ROBOTICS AT THE BRISTOL ROBOTICS LABORATORY, ARTHUR RICHARDS, SAYING: "We are continually excited about the idea of drones for inspection. It's a role that they are very good at. So we thought about bridges and chimneys and difficult to get at infrastructure. Strangely enough I work in an aerospace department and we hadn't really thought about inspecting aircraft with them, so it was a very nice discovery for us." DRONE FLYING (SOUNDBITE) (English) HEAD OF AERIAL ROBOTICS AT THE BRISTOL ROBOTICS LABORATORY, ARTHUR RICHARDS, SAYING: "To do it outside, the big challenge is the wind. We don't have drones that are robust enough and controlled well enough, at the moment, to be able to work certainly close to, they can work outside but you really won't want them to work close to anything you value, because they'll simply get blown around."
  • Embargoed: 12th June 2014 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: United Kingdom
  • Country: United Kingdom
  • Topics: Health,Technology,Transport
  • Reuters ID: LVAE62TCOVUI0YFDUPLONUNQXJAT
  • Story Text: With airlines constantly looking fort ways to keep their costs down and stay ahead of their competitors, one budget airline is investigating the use of drones to inspect planes for damage.
    Britain's EasyJet airlines says the drones can be programmed to scan and assess the planes, reporting back to engineers with any damage to the outside of an aircraft, such as that caused by birds or lightning strikes.
    The airline's Head of Engineering, Ian Davies, says the current practice of human inspection is very labour intensive for engineers.
    "They spend ninety percent of their time inspecting the aircraft where there is no damage. The idea here is to isolate the damage quickly and then use the human being to do the damage assessment more quickly. So this is not about deskilling the process, it's about using the human being in the best most efficient way," he said.
    EasyJet says checks which might normally take more than a day could be completed in a couple of hours, and potentially with greater accuracy.
    Davies says using the drones would also be a safer method of inspection.
    "This is a viable way of actually examining large areas of an aircraft. I mean this is an A320 aircraft behind me, but if you imagine an A380 aircraft, it's a much bigger aircraft, much higher to inspect. So there are safety implications here, we haven't got human beings working at height," he said.
    EasyJet says the recordings by the drones would allow them to have a complete record of the aircraft to keep and refer to over time. Currently there is no record of what engineers see when they do an initial inspection.
    The airline is working with Britain's Bristol Robotics Laboratory, a partnership between the University of Bristol and the University of West England. The laboratory said it hadn't thought of using drones for this purpose before being approached by the airline.
    "We are continually excited about the idea of drones for inspection. It's a role that they are very good at. So we thought about bridges and chimneys and difficult to get at infrastructure. Strangely enough I work in an aerospace department and we hadn't really thought about inspecting aircraft with them, so it was a very nice discovery for us," said the head of Aerial Robotics at the laboratory, Arthur Richards.
    There are still a number of challenges to do with controlling the drones accurately and automatically, and at this stage Richards says he'd be wary of using them outside.
    "To do it outside, the big challenge is the wind. We don't have drones that are robust enough and controlled well enough, at the moment, to be able to work certainly close to, they can work outside but you really won't want them to work close to anything you value, because they'll simply get blown around," he said.
    EasyJet says it hopes to trial the drones in the coming months and that it won't be too long before they are used regularly.
    "I think, two to three years time we will be actively using this. This is not expensive technology, we know that, and the cost of these are coming down all of the time, so I think there is a possibility, a good possibility that within three years we could actively be using this," Davies said.
    The airline is hoping the technology will mean planes can be assessed more quickly, limiting delays to passengers when an aircraft is damaged.
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