China Eastern Airlines adopts Oracle Big Data to enhance flight safety

China Eastern Airlines rapidly processes and analyzes over 100TB of annual flight data to enhance flight safety and fuel efficiency with Oracle.

China Eastern Airlines Corporation Ltd. (CEA) is one of China’s three major airlines and ranks number seven in the world. As a member of the global airline network SkyTeam Alliance, it services over 100 million passengers annually and reaches 1,062 destinations in 177 countries. CEA aims to become a world-class integrated air service provider by dedicating to staff devotion, customer loyalty, shareholder satisfaction, and public trust. 

To enhance customer experience and drive global airline excellence, CEA wanted to improve the ability to process and analyze massive volume of big data from its data lab, to ensure flight safety and reduce operational costs.

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By processing and analyzing over 100TB of complex daily flight data with Oracle Big Data Appliance, we gained ability to easily identify and predict potential faults and enhanced flight safety. The solution also helped to cut fuel consumption and increase customer experience.

Wang XuewuHead of Data Lab, China Eastern Airlines Corporation Ltd.

Business challenges

Promote flight safety and achieve fuel efficiency by enabling the airline to rapidly capture and analyze over 100TB of annual flight data recorded by Quick Access Recorder (QAR), such as aircraft condition and engine life, throughout the journey 

Increase competitive edge by gaining a high performing big data analytics platform to support analysis on marketing, customer service, and flight operation

Oracle Big Data Appliance delivers powerful computing, networking, and key management capabilities, enabling us to centrally manage Hadoop deployment via an intuitive user interface and rapidly analyze high volume of daily flight data.

Wang XuewuHead of Data Lab, China Eastern Airlines Corporation Ltd.

Results

Enhanced flight safety by seamlessly integrating Hadoop data from thousands of sensors across the aircraft in a single query with Oracle Big Data Appliance, enabling the airline to evaluate the health of key devices, such as flight engines, and predict potential faults

Improved the quality of flight operation by optimizing big data analysis and enabling users to easily analyze pilots’ behavior—including the standard and actual values of flight angle, take-off speed, and landing speed—and identify possible risk of engine damage and threaten flight safety

Maximized aircraft fuel consumption by gaining valuable insight through multidimensional analysis on over 60 attributes, such as aircraft type, wind speed, height, flight path traffic, and provide recommendations of flight speed to save fuel 

Boosted customer experience by using Oracle Big Data Appliance’s advanced spatial analytic capabilities to discover the engagement relationship between travelers and airline services—including in-flight cabin service, baggage, ground service, marketing, flight operation, website, and call center—and improve service delivery

Published:February 1, 2018