Smart Link Plus is fundamentally changing the way we interact and support our customers

Your Principal has been planning this important trip for a while and you’re on site to ensure that everything runs smoothly with the departure. As the last passengers board the aircraft and the door shuts behind them, you settle into an office at the FBO and pullout your laptop to access Bombardier’s MyMaintenance app. The aircraft is going coast to coast (headed west), then on to Asia after a one-day layover. Not exactly a quick turn but still a small margin for error. Just then, you get the first notifications from the app, white and gray status and info messages as the aircraft climbs. All normal. You settle in for the next five (5) hours to shadow the aircraft. Suddenly, your uneventful trip is interrupted by an amber CAS (caution) message. You study the error code attached to the notification and decide to run a search on it in SmartFixPlus. The search yields?a few possible explanations, all of them benign except for one. Your next move is to inform the flight crew that you’re troubleshooting the issue (they already know they don’t need to take notes or photos of the message or readings for their post-flight debriefing as everything is recorded in the MyMaintenance app). It’s not a flight critical issue but you’re new to the Global 7500 (as is most everyone else) so you treat the issue with the requisite attention it deserves.

You decide to call Bombardier’s 24-7 Customer Response Center (CRC) to independently confirm your troubleshooting of the issue. You get CRC on the line and they bring up the exact same screen you are viewing on your MyMaintenance app. No diagnostic recap is required. You take two (2) minutes to run through the context of the issue and CRC springs into action. CRC runs a wider Remote Parameter Display (RPD) request to the aircraft which interrogates areas of the aircraft based on the parameters selected and confirms your finding. As a further fail-safe, CRC pulls up its Online Parts Ordering (OPO) screen and arranges to drop-ship a part to the aircraft in case the technician needs to swap out the existing LRU. The plane lands and the automated data transfer engages e.g. bulk data to Bombardier, the engine trend monitoring data to the engine OEM, and the flight efficiency data to the FDM/FOQA service provider (all part of your connected aircraft package from Smart Link Plus). You then confirm that the Bombardier MRP is on site. A couple of hours later, your Bombardier Field Service Rep calls you to confirm that the aircraft has been cleared to fly tomorrow. The aircraft continues on to its final destination in Asia the next day as planned.

While this could make for an interesting maintenance training course case study, it just so happens that it was a “Tuesday” late last month for us at Bombardier. That actual event is also a perfect example of how Smart Link Plus is fundamentally changing the way Bombardier interacts with its customers: We are empowering customers with the tools to use real-time information to make data-driven decisions; and, automating previously manual tasks such as the transfer of aircraft and engine performance data over secure lines onto state-of-the-art cloud storage technology.

Next up: Smart Link Plus and the issue of privacy involves much more than masking your aircraft’s registration.