IEEE - Aerospace and Electronic Systems - March 2021 - 12

The Role of Blockchain Technology in Aviation Industry
data. The adapter process interfaces to the airline or airport to accept and convert the data in a standard format to
merge it in the FlightChain network [2], [27], [28].

RESEARCH CHALLENGES

TRUSTABIT
Many intermediary companies, such as AirHelp, allows the
passengers to get compensation for their delayed/canceled
flights. However, existing solutions are lacking to seamlessly
process and transfer ticket reimbursement amount for a canceled/delayed flight. In existing systems, passengers are
obliged to physically visit or call the airline to receive the
voucher as compensation for their delayed/canceled flight.
Consequently, the excessive administrative procedures
involved in voucher processing prolong the passenger's waiting time that can lead to a decrease in customer loyalty toward
a particular airline. TrustaBit is a blockchain-based system
that seamlessly delivers vouchers to the passengers immediately after the flight is canceled to retain the customers of an
airline. TrustaBit has employed a Hyperledger Fabric platform to establish trust, transparency, and accountability of
reimbursement operations in a highly secure way. The chaincodes, implemented on Hyperledger Fabric and triggered from
the external flight cancel/delay event increases the operational
efficiency by immediately transferring the vouchers on the
registered e-mail address of the passenger. Moreover, the
traceability feature of the Hyperledger Fabric platform enables airlines to trace the vouchers [5], [29]-[31].

LOYYAL
Account reconciliation and automated payments through
third-party services lead to high operational costs of system when managing the loyalty programs using outdated
centralized-based loyalty management protocols. Loyyal,
a San Francisco based start-up, followed the blockchain
technology to offer standardized methods for reinventing
the loyalty programs for creating, rewarding, and managing loyalty points. The interoperability support of the loyyal platform makes possible the integration of highly
fragmented industries to create collaborations opportunities among the alliance organizations. Loyyal has used the
Hyperledger Fabric platform to ensure high performance,
network scalability, and data resiliency to present a more
robust rewards management system. Among a list of features, multibranded coalitions, superior liability management, and dynamic issuance and redemption are
prominent for the blockchain-based loyalty program management systems. The aviation participants use the Loyyal
platform for timely and transparently transfer mile points
among the partners of airline alliances. Also, Loyyal can
enable passengers to access the loyalty points in their wallets in real time. Moreover, the intrinsic traceability feature of blockchain technology enables airlines to trace and
12

track the loyalty points to propose more personalized and
exciting offers for the customers [32]-[34].

Motivated by a thorough discussion on blockchain opportunities, we identified several research issues and challenges that are discussed in the following sections.

LIMITED THROUGHPUT AND TRANSACTION
EXECUTION RATE
Blockchain technology has received significant attention
from the aviation industry partners during the past decade.
For instance, Hahn Air airline has recently launched a
blockchain-based online air ticketing service to minimize
frauds that happened due to fake ticketing. Similarly,
many other research projects on blockchain adoption (e.g.,
Singapore aviation KrisFlyer) are in their early stages of
development and implementation. The primary objective
of these projects is to automate MRO services, secure customer loyalty programs, and ensure reliable cargo tracking
through blockchain immutable transaction logs [1], [35].
The aforementioned potential areas can generate a huge
amount of transactional data. For instance, passengers
record, financial transactions, and maintenance logbook of
aircraft components require an adequate storage space of
the blockchain platform due to frequent transactions [7], [8].
Also, for automated ACDM, the transaction execution time
should be minimum to ensure successful execution of a
plan [22], [23]. Nevertheless, existing blockchain platforms
can handle only a few transactions per second. For instance,
the Bitcoin platform handles three to seven transactions per
second. On the other hand, the Ethereum platform can execute up to 20 transactions per second. The solutions such as
sharding, proof-of-stack (PoS), off-chain state channels, and
increased block-size can scale up the blockchain platform
to increase transaction execution rate [1], [7], [36]. In comparison, private blockchain platforms are fast, reliable, trustful, and handle hundreds of transactions per second to fulfill
aviation services demand.

LIMITED ORGANIZATION COLLABORATION
Blockchain technology is geared toward creating new efficiencies and services for the aviation industry. The foremost
requirements of the aviation industry include the following:
1) high data security;
2) safeguard against unauthorized access;
3) more privacy.

IEEE A&E SYSTEMS MAGAZINE

MARCH 2021

IEEE - Aerospace and Electronic Systems - March 2021

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE - Aerospace and Electronic Systems - March 2021