Japan Airlines has awarded ST Engineering’s Commercial Aerospace business a five-year component support contract.

Under the ‘Maintenance-By-the-Hour’ (MBH) contract, ST Engineering will provide full integrated component support to the airline’s 787 fleet, as well as that of its low-cost subsidiary Zipair Tokyo.

The agreement started in September, and adds to an ongoing 737-800 component MBH programme that ST Engineering has with Japan Airlines.

ST Engineering said it would introduce an on-wing component health and reliability management programme “as part of a customised solution for Japan Airlines and a growing trend in leveraging digital technologies to derive valuable insights for MRO”.

The programme uses an in-house developed software to provide diagnostics and prescriptive advisory by detecting anomalies and predicting components’ remaining useful life, the MRO company said.

“We thank Japan Airlines for placing their trust in us once again to support them with our trademark MBH programme,” said ST Engineering’s Commercial Aerospace president Jeffrey Lam. “Through this latest partnership, we will not only widen our scope of service for Japan Airlines, but also deepen our level of service by employing predictive maintenance capabilities to enable better maintenance scheduling and reduction of aircraft downtime, so that Japan Airlines can extract optimal value from their assets.”

Japan Airlines’ executive officer, procurement Yukio Nakagawa commented: “We are convinced that this programme will support us in operating our 787 fleet with high safety, quality and reliability. I believe ST Engineering and Japan Airlines will enhance their partnership through this latest agreement which includes collaborations on predictive maintenance.”