IEEE - Aerospace and Electronic Systems - March 2021 - 8

The Role of Blockchain Technology in Aviation Industry
(to identify frauds) can lessen the total processing time to
improve the experience of passengers. Furthermore, it can
facilitate passengers to purchase tickets using cryptocurrency. Blockchain technology provides a single source of
truth to all stakeholders in the air ticketing service to eliminate the chances of duplicate ticket selling and purchasing. Being a consensus algorithm governed distributed
technology, it verifies the authenticity and correctness of
the tickets. Moreover, based on smart contracts, users can
be assisted for a timely cash refund if a passenger wants to
cancel the purchased ticket [8], [9]. The smart contracts
deployed on the blockchain platform can automate the
ticket transferring process for airlines alliance. Moreover,
through smart contracts, the passengers can be immediately notified about the canceled flight. In such a scenario,
passengers do not need to wait for a long time as smart
contracts can quickly transfer the reimbursed amount to
the passenger's wallet.

AUTOMATING AIRPORT COLLABORATIVE DECISION
MAKING (ACDM)
The congestion at the airports has increased significantly
due to a notable increase in commercial aircraft. ACDM
team aims to optimally and efficiently utilize available airport resources to minimize service delays. The success of
ACDM highly depends on the transparency of the shared
information among stakeholders in the aviation industry
such as ground handlers, air traffic controllers, and airport
operators [22], [23].
ACDM exploits many entities that capture, process,
communicate, and design plans for efficient utilization of
scarce airport resources. However, traditional ACDM systems are prone to a single point of failure and offer limited
operational transparency to stakeholders. Moreover, the
captured data from the aviation entities could be incorrect
due to low precision and accuracy of sensors employed to
collect data. It is believed that blockchain technology can
use smart contracts to authenticate entities and verify the
data based on the stand-with-majority approach. Besides,
for a busy airport, a multisignature smart contract can be
used to automate the decision to clear a flight based on the
consensus of authorized entities. Traditionally, an aircraft
is charged based on the time it undergoes through necessary maintenance services on the airport gate. The visibility feature of blockchain technology can increase the trust
of airlines to calculate bills based on the pay-as-you-use
service model [7], [22]. Also, blockchain technology can
assist in verifying and auditing the actions of ground handlers during baggage loading and unloading processes.
Figure 3 presents a generic, high-level, and flexible
blockchain-based framework for the aviation industry.
The bottom layer highlights the systems users, operators,
and regularity authority to monitor and assess the
8

regularity compliance services of the airline industry. The
registration process ensures that the system is protected
from outsiders as it preserves the access rights of the participating entities. For instance, in spare parts service management, only authorized manufacturers can store the
details about the raw material that is used to manufacture
a spare part component. All other entities involved in
spare part transportation, installation, and MRO services
can only view the manufacturing details of the spare part.
The supported services are centralized and they do not
require a consensus of miners. In Figure 3, SC-A and SCB represent smart contracts that are programmed to handle
ticket cancellation and aircraft components handling
cases. SC-A handles available ticket updating and payment settlement use cases. Alternatively, SC-B is used to
handle shipment, ownership change, and MRO logbook
updating of an aircraft. On the other hand, SC-C collects,
verifies, and uses data from collaborative teams to prepare
plans to share scarce airport resources.
For revenue sharing, a system to automatically calculate
and transfer the revenue among the participating airlines of a
particular airline alliance for the sold ticket is presented in
Figure 4. The proposed system employs a dynamic bid based
protocol that can be deployed using a permissioned blockchain platform. Through dynamic biding protocol, the marketing airline can select a carrier based on a set of parameters,
such as bid price, reputation score, and capacity. The reputation score of an airline is dynamic and it is calculated by the
passengers based on the offered quality of service (QoS) of an
airline. After airline selection, the marketing airline can transfer the earned revenue to the wallet of carrier airline for the
sold tickets. The presented system can use a collateral-based
payment settlement protocol[24] to foster trust among airline
alliance. The presented system provides high operational
transparency for airline alliances to meet the requirements of
aviation industry partners. Table 1 has presented the requirements of the users from the aviation industry that are involved
in providing or using business services of a particular application area from aviation industry. The opportunities for blockchain technology along with its key features for implementing
the business services to comply with the user's requirements
are also listed.

RECENT BLOCKCHAIN-CENTRIC CASE STUDIES IN
AVIATION INDUSTRY
Since the past decade, it has been reported that centralized systems pose threats to data privacy and affect the QoS due to
escalating network traffic rates. Ongoing blockchain-centric
research projects bring together stakeholders in the aviation
industry to perform business activities in a trustful, reliable,
and auditable way. Many research projects have been initiated
by well-known organizations to employ blockchain technology in the aviation industry. In this section, we discuss five

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MARCH 2021

IEEE - Aerospace and Electronic Systems - March 2021

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