IEEE - Aerospace and Electronic Systems - March 2021 - 4

Feature Article:

DOI. No. 10.1109/MAES.2020.3043152

The Role of Blockchain Technology in Aviation
Industry
Raja Wasim Ahmad, Khaled Salah, Raja Jayaraman, Haya R. Hasan,
Ibrar Yaqoob, Mohammed Omar, Khalifa University of Science and
Technology, Abu Dhabi, UAE

INTRODUCTION
Remarkable benefits of blockchain and its suitability for
adoption in aviation have caused considerable excitement
among stakeholders of the aviation industry. According to
the International Air Transport Association, the aviation
industry handles over 52 million tons of freight every year,
representing 35% of the global trade value. Also, a report
from Accenture confirms that 86% of the aviation industry
partners are intended to integrate blockchain technology in
their corporate by the year 2021 (https://www.iata.org/en/programs/cargo/). Aviation is a complex, dynamic, highly competitive, and safety-critical industry. In the aviation industry,
especially for the airlines, data-driven decision making is
influenced by a variety of factors, such as data availability,
consistency, and precision level. However, oftentimes data
are inconsistent across the organization, which can affect aircraft airworthiness score, safety, and finances. The inherent
features of blockchain technology can foster information
sharing and present a unified view of data to improve the
safety and aircraft airworthiness level. Consequently,

Authors' current address: Raja Wasim Ahmad,
Khaled Salah, Haya R. Hasan, and Ibrar Yaqoob are
with Research Center for Digital Supply Chain and
Operations Management; and Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Khalifa University of Science and Technology, Abu Dhabi, UAE.
Raja Jayaraman and Mohammed Omar are with
Research Center for Digital Supply Chain and Operations Management; and Department of Industrial
and Systems Engineering, Khalifa University of Science and Technology, Abu Dhabi, UAE (e-mails:
raja.ahmad@ku.ac.ae; khaled.salah@ku.ac.ae; raja.
jayaraman@ku.ac.ae; haya.hasan@ku.ac.ae; ibrar.
yaqoob@ku.ac.ae; mohammed.omar@ku.ac.ae).
Manuscript received February 18, 2020, revised July 15,
2020; accepted October 21, 2020, and ready for
publication December 3, 2020.
Review handled by Ruhai Wang.
0885-8985/21/$26.00 ß 2021 IEEE
4

blockchain technology establishes trust to facilitate cooperation and collaboration among organizations [1]-[4].
Blockchain is a decentralized, distributed, and immutable record of transactions that are stored in a distributed
network of nodes. In the aviation industry, aircraft maintenance logbooks are stored manually as a physical ledger
within the airlines possession. However, a physical maintenance logbook is susceptive to being lost or forged,
which decreases the airworthiness of the aircraft, although
the aircraft could be in excellent flying condition. Consequently, a missing maintenance logbook decreases the
trust in the integrity and reliability of the aircraft [4]-[7].
Therefore, the aircraft owner has to reconstruct maintenance logbooks from scratch, which is both time consuming and resource expensive. To handle such issues,
blockchain technology with a decentralized storage service can permanently store aircraft service records as well
as keep immutable logs of transactions on the blockchain
ledger. It presents each authorized participant with the
same information to increase transparency, reliability,
availability, and Federal Aviation Administration (FAA)
compliance.
Traditional aviation systems mostly rely on direct negotiation or centralized mediation services for reconciliation
to settle the business disputes. Among others, high cost and
extended time are two crucial challenges to existing dispute
resolution methods. However, blockchain technology can
employ smart contracts to automate business rules and
resolve disputes in a much reliable and trustful way. A
smart contract is a self-executing piece of code that establishes the trust among the participating organizations [8], [9].
For instance, in the aviation industry, smart contracts have
huge potential to efficiently maintain aircraft maintenance
records, validate crew certificates, and verify the ground
handler's operations at the airport. To the best of our
knowledge, none of the existing studies have explored or
reviewed the potential of blockchain technology in the aviation industry. In this article, we focus on adopting blockchain technology in the aviation industry. The major
contributions of this article are summarized as follows.

IEEE A&E SYSTEMS MAGAZINE

MARCH 2021

https://www.iata.org/en/programs/cargo https://www.iata.org/en/programs/cargo

IEEE - Aerospace and Electronic Systems - March 2021

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