Emerging trends in aviation and tourism industry.

Byline: Ahsan Nisar

Aviation Industry

The aerospace industry is searching for innovative results to boost its business in a sector that operates in a cut-throat competitive environment. Blockchain is a disruptive technology that has the potential to affect various stakeholders and replace current platforms. Most people associate blockchain with cryptocurrencies but it's a cutting-edge technology that may optimize performance of aviation industry. At the most basic level, every blockchain is a digital ledger of transactions that take place on a peer-to-peer network with the ability to control access to data. The five core issues determining the adoption of blockchain by the industry are: Specific adoption factors, the replacement of current centralized platforms, customer loyalty, adoption barriers and a general lack of awareness.

The aerospace industry is vast, complex, interconnected and growing rapidly. Depending on its size, a plane can include anywhere from a few hundred thousand parts to several million. But there's no readily available single snapshot that can show an aircraft's condition or history. Maintenance companies frequently log records by hand. Those records are often shared in stacks of printed PDFs. Even when data is digitized, it is spread across (and isolated within) multiple parties and systems. Suppliers, vendors, and customers of the same manufacturer, who may also compete against one another, are reluctant to share information. By ensuring that participants have access only to the information they are entitled to, blockchain could simultaneously improve participants' visibility into their own businesses while safeguarding their data from competitors.

The first group of stakeholders that stand to gain from the unique benefits of blockchain are the operators (airlines and air cargo carriers) who will reap the revenue associated with increased aircraft availability. But other participants in the ecosystem could also benefit from improved parts traceability through verifying their location and use or the ability to create innovative revenue models. This opportunity will exist for incumbent manufacturers and maintenance companies, as well as startups working on traceability, outsourcing, and air-traffic control solutions.

Blockchain's decentralized and inimitable nature offers the capacity to assign a "digital date" for every part and update it each time the part moves through the supply chain or is installed on a plane...