Trust in AI in commercial aviation maintenance: Gaining efficiencies while enhancing safety

Abstract

The commercial aviation industry is currently integrating AI throughout its infrastructure. While business applications of AI can quickly improve relations with customers and efficiently help increase profit, the higher risk operational areas of the industry related to flight safety, like the flight deck, air traffic control, and maintenance, require important human factors trust between the AI being implemented and the user. In the case of pilots and air traffic controllers, this trust is paramount to safe flight. How important is this trust in AI to the aviation maintainer, given that AI is being integrated into the current maintenance workforce as a rapid solution to address the shortage of Aviation Maintenance Technicians (AMT)? With the AMT shortage forecasted to continue over the next 20 years, these opportunities to make AI-aided maintenance decisions bring efficiency and safety gains to maintenance operations and have quickly become a reality. The current AI aviation maintenance technologies that are having the most significant impact in the aviation maintenance arena include diagnostics for engine health, predictive maintenance, automated visual inspections, and data-driven work management to predict and inform better maintenance decisions. The researchers developed an AXTENI framework for AI team decision-making in aviation. They introduced it for maintenance use to demonstrate the importance of trust in AI for ethical maintenance decision-making (DM) to occur. The research survey, ‘Fostering Trust: Maintainers and Artificial Intelligence in Aviation Maintenance”, is introduced to determine where aviation maintainers currently stand in their trust in their newly adopted AI decision-making tools. An analysis of the final survey data is presented.

Keywords: Aviation Maintenance, AI, Trust

DOI: 10.54941/ahfe1007454