Honeywell has signed an agreement for Hainan Airlines (HNA) to become the first airline in the world to use the company’s GoDirect Maintenance Service program, which uses connectivity and data analytics for maintenance operations.

HNA’s current fleet of roughly 50 Airbus A330s will be outfitted with Honeywell’s Connected Auxiliary Power Unit (APU) predictive maintenance service. Honeywell will also outfit HNA’s future fleet of more than 40 A330s with the same service, totaling more than 90 A330s using GoDirect Maintenance Service.

The Connected APU service works by using an existing data connection on the plane to download APU maintenance and fault data to better predict impending hardware failures.

[Image courtesy: Honeywell]