The history of modern aviation famously began with the Wright brothers at Kitty Hawk in 1903. What followed was a steep innovation curve and, around a decade later (1913), a rickety seaplane made its initial scheduled commercial flight for the first ever commercial airline. This plane was built by Tom Benoist.
Source: https://www.fantasyofflight.com, Airbus company website, as at September 2021
Before Beniost built his plane, in 1907 he opened America’s first ever shop selling nothing but aeronautical parts and supplies. Made of wood, fabric and wire with around 100 parts this plane was a far cry from today’s Airbus A380 (the world’s largest passenger plane), which is made of over four million parts.
Crucially, over 100 years later, sourcing and securing parts for either of these planes clearly hasn’t been impacted by any innovation curve. We’re told that just 2.5% of all transactions in the entire aerospace industry are carried out electronically. So why does it matter if Boeing buys a plane part from eBay, Amazon or any marketplace?
Trust is the industry’s key component.
The entire industry sits under a mountain of heavy regulation in that plane parts require certification from the U.S. FAA as well as a host of other agencies. Each part must be documented with a complete his- tory of its ownership, use, and repairs. Allied to this; a commercial airplane might be in service for 30 years, with five or six different owners around the world. This process has always been in place since airlines became commercial and transatlantic, digital innovation has yet to be felt in this part of the aviation industry. Another layer of uncertainty is the dire consequences for companies should any uncertified or counterfeit parts find their way into the supply chain. The paper trail for just one part becomes a bureaucratic nightmare. Thus, for as long as planes could fly, the aerospace industry has drowned in paperwork.
Honeywell Aviation is the first in this area to potentially solve these problems by fully integrating aircraft record generation into its digital blockchain ledger.
Blockchain technology establishes trust between all parties on the chain through digital transparency. This trust creates an encrypted digital trail, cutting the red tape and making it quicker, easier and ultimately safer to buy and sell as well as authenticate the origin of any part. Blockchain has removed the cloud of complexity for Honeywell (and ultimately the entire industry) by creating a more robust system: revolutionising a $4bn industry in the process. The two phone calls and four e-mails it used to take to close a deal (a process lasting between 2 days and 2 weeks), can now be done in just a few minutes.
GoDirect Trade, the blockchain-enabled marketplace began in 2018. With the difficulties of the parts market we spoke about earlier, the hours required to check, label and list each of the parts inventory (some 25,000 listings) would have taken around 2,916 hours or 365 working days. If you’ve ever listed any of your stuff for sale on eBay, you’ll be familiar with the amount of labour required in this process. Thanks to Blockchain, GoDirect Trade now has the tools to list these parts with images, specifications, product descriptions, certifications and the much needed paperwork, giving the buyer trust when ordering.
So far, more than 3,200 companies and 9,500 users are active on GoDirect Trade, and more than 80 storefronts have combined to process more than $25 million in transactions since the marketplace’s launch. Additionally, like any market place, GoDirect will accumulate a mountain of data. This data could be used to generate more powerful analytics that support better business decisions centred on pricing or retiring different parts. Companies are starting to invest heavily in technologies like blockchain to digitally manufacture trust between the buyers and sellers as well as a whole host of other real-world practical uses.
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