Aero Star Aviation Introduces AI Maintenance Assistant

Aero Star Aviation, a Dallas-based FAA repair station and Embraer maintenance specialist, has introduced a new artificial intelligence (AI) tool to improve efficiency and customer experience. The system, featuring a virtual assistant named Ava, is designed to streamline troubleshooting for technicians and reduce maintenance turnaround times by accessing data captured in the Corridor MRO management software that Aero Star uses.

“Artificial intelligence is something that is new, and it’s very powerful, and can impact new ways of doing things in aviation,” said Aero Star owner and president Chris Grinnell. An aircraft technician with years of experience working on Embraer business jets, Grinnell often finds himself dragged into questions of how to troubleshoot a problem that a newer mechanic has never seen before. “It’s all based off of tribal knowledge,” he said.

Instead of hoping that the tribal knowledge will get passed along from himself and other experienced technicians, Grinnell wondered whether all the maintenance data captured in Corridor could inform an AI assistant that would help answer those questions. The result was Ava (Aero Star virtual assistant). “It’s accessing all of our data that we have combined over the years and it’s putting it at the access of the technicians’ fingertips,” he said.

All of Aero Star’s technicians can open Ava from any device and enter search terms. Grinnell demonstrated an example of a nosewheel shimmy where a new technician has never come across that problem.

“Ava is using a semantic search of information,” he explained, “and it’s pulling out what we typically see and what we do, and gives them a direction of what to go after. It could be a nosewheel and tire issue, improper shimming of the nose landing gear, worn bearings, or even a shimmy damper that's at fault.”

Ava doesn’t have access to maintenance manuals or parts catalogs because those belong to Embraer, but Grinnell is hoping that eventually OEMs will be willing to share that information to help improve tools like Ava. For now, Ava has plenty of information from Corridor, including parts that were used for repairs and more than 6,000 maintenance events. Once the technician has identified the problem, with Ava’s help, they can then ask Ava to identify the parts that will be needed for the repair.

Implemented just a few weeks ago, one of the challenges has been getting technicians to become comfortable with Ava. “Now that I’ve been able to show the power and the ease [of Ava] at their fingertips, a lot of technicians are getting on board,” he said. “Surprisingly, it’s a lot of the veteran technicians that have a lot of tribal knowledge; they want that ease to get into it. And we get huge positive feedback from new technicians, because we’re able to make them feel more comfortable with what they’re doing.”

For companies like Aero Star, efficiency is key to bringing customers back, and Ava can also tap Corridor to see how long a particular job should take. This is not only helpful for quoting but also for the technician to know whether they have the time for the job, if, say, lunchtime, a break, or quitting time is coming up. This information can be used to gauge a technician’s own efficiency and whether they are completing that job in a timely manner or need additional guidance and training.

What Ava is doing could also help aircraft OEMs because maintenance shops like Aero Star capture a lot of information about the reliability of the aircraft and its components. “With us specializing in the aircraft, we have a lot of historical data,” Grinnell said. “I can ask it, how many nosewheel assemblies have we replaced? A lot of maintenance facilities, their data is paramount; they just don’t know how to extricate it.”

Grinnell gave another example: windshield heat failures in Phenom 100s and 300s. He asked Ava how many work orders included that issue during 2024, and it was 248 aircraft. Then he asked Ava how many of these were repeat discrepancies, and the answer was 182. “Now it’s tracking trends,” he said, and this could also be valuable information for an OEM.

Aero Star’s next step for Ava is tracking parts and pricing trends. “Over the past 12 months, we’ve seen price fluctuations from the OEM, and we really don’t have anything to back it up or what it was previously,” he said.

Ava will be able to show parts prices from selected years. “If there are any price adjustments in between those, we can trend out where the pricing is going, and if any of the vendors are having a regular price adjustment throughout the year.”

What this does for Aero Star’s customers is provide more information on their operating costs and how much they spend on maintenance. “A lot of them don’t capture that,” Grinnell said, and don’t know the trend of these costs. “We will be able to pull that data, what they have spent on a quarterly basis, an annual basis, and even the lifetime of the ownership.”

For Aero Star, the bottom line is improving the maintenance process, which ultimately will benefit customers. “If we can reduce our downtime and troubleshooting, and get more precise on installing parts that are correct, then I think that it’s a win-win for everybody,” he concluded.