Bertrand Masson, an aeronautical engineer at Qantas Airways, has worked in the aviation industry for over 20 years. Bertrand obtained his Mechanical Engineering Degree from the École nationale supérieure d'ingénieurs (ENSIAME) in France in 1990 and his Master’s Degree in Aeronautical Engineering from the Institut National Polytechnique de Toulouse in 1992. He was employed by Airbus France and was Research Assistant at Stanford University/NASA Ames working in the field of Computational Fluid Dynamics and Turbulence Modelling. He worked at the Airbus Design Office and with the Safran Group in Le Havre, France. In 1995 he moved to the Saudi Arabian Airlines in Jeddah where he was Senior Specialist in Flight Operations. One of his projects there was bringing the Boeing 777 in to service. In 2000, he moved to Dubai where he held the post of Senior Operations Engineer at Emirates working on both Flight Crew Procedures, Flight Tests and Aircraft Performance. He was also heavily involved in the induction of the Airbus A380 into service for Emirates. This included flight tests, Flight Crew training and aircraft performance analysis. In 2008, Bertrand moved to Qantas to head Fleet Development, responsible for the Aircraft Performance, Weights Engineering and Aircraft Evaluation Departments. He has lead numerous aircraft and engine technical evaluations, as well as managing day to day Flight Operational Support for the Qantas Group. He has also lead numerous data mining projects for the Qantas group, including route evaluation, predictive maintenance, engine gas path analysis, vehicle dynamics and cabin layout optimization to name a few. In his spare time, he is completing his PhD in Computer Science and Engineering at the University of New South Wales, fusing machine learning and aircraft path optimisation.
Efficient algorithms for Big Data have considerably enhanced ability of Qantas to strategically and tactically improve both airline operations as well as the airline's raison d’être in the safe transport of passengers. Large quantities of data have been long collected from aircraft for safety purposes. The more recent additions to Qantas' fleet have multiplied the data volume by several orders of magnitude enabling a greater focus on efficient operations. Through a series of actual examples, this talk will explore the power of the IIoT applied to airline operations, and how it is helping industry to gain deeper understanding of causes and operations optimization.