At the PAM Dublin 2025 conference last week, easyJet outlined how its fast-evolving predictive maintenance programme is transforming engineering performance across its 350-strong fleet, delivering major gains in availability, reliability, and manpower efficiency.

Speaking in front of more than 250 delegates, Aidan Kearney, head of maintenance operations, said easyJet’s journey since 2014 has been driven by the need to move beyond what he called “a reactive based reliability system” that, while strong, was “unable to predict failures” and offered “no further significant gains in reliability” under traditional processes.

“Our objective was to analyse aircraft component behaviour in flight using existing system sensors, and then use algorithms based on engineering design data, OEM tolerances and operator feedback to identify suspect components,” Kearney told delegates.

When it comes to data, Kearney warned that “if you don’t know what to do with it, then it is pointless – purpose is everything when it comes to harvesting and using data,” emphasising that meaningful gains in predictive maintenance depend on using data to drive timely interventions, not simply building large datasets.

Kearney traced easyJet’s predictive maintenance strategy back to 2015, when Airbus conducted a study using three years of flight and MIS data that proved the ability to predict faults ahead of existing alerts. “By 2016, we were trialling low-volume data capture across 80 aircraft, followed shortly by high-volume tests that avoided AOG-level events even at an early stage of development,” he explained.

Automated alerts went live in 2017, and a long-term partnership with Airbus in 2018 enabled the aggressive roll-out of FOMAX across the entire fleet.

Today, easyJet operates 22 live Skywise SPM models, with a further 60 in calibration, and has integrated Skywise, SHM, SPM and SPF+ into a dedicated predictive ecosystem within its Maintenance Control Centre.

Between January 2019 and September 2025, the airline has avoided 171 major delays, 662 minor delays and 1,343 cancellations as a direct result of predictive maintenance, Kearney highlighted.

However, he cautioned that the industry is “losing skillset and experience of a generation, but data can help bridge the gap… only if used correctly.”

He urged the sector to adopt smarter maintenance approaches: “My message to aviation is that if you fail to innovate, you will ultimately fail as an industry – you need to be more agile and move with the times.”

Despite a growing fleet, easyJet has maintained availability and technical dispatch reliability at 98.63% and 99.57% respectively.

“We now have better reporting and oversight of both insourced and outsourced maintenance, which in turn gives us better understanding of the fleet, leading to more mature contracts and better use of manpower – the most precious resource in engineering,” he said.

Looking ahead, Kearney suggested that predictive maintenance will remain central to easyJet’s engineering strategy: “We’re now merging engineering expertise with data science. The real gains come when you pair human experience with machine-led insight.”

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