US Airways selects Airbus’ real-time maintenance tool

Following the success of AIRMAN, Airbus' real-time maintenance and troubleshooting tool, in America West operations, Airbus Customer Services is pleased to welcome the fleet engineering team of US Airways as a new AIRMAN user. Airbus has signed an agreement with US Airways Group for the selection of AIRMAN to monitor its Airbus fleet of over 200 Airbus aircraft. With this selection, US Airways becomes the largest user of this successful Airbus maintenance service, designed to help reduce maintenance and operating costs and improve aircraft dispatch reliability.

"Over the last three years, we have reaped the benefits of the AIRMAN tool on the former America West fleet," said Scott Hutson, senior manager, Engineering Technical Center at US Airways. "As an acknowledgement of AIRMAN's potential, we will add over 100 aircraft to this tool in early 2007, bringing the total to over 200 aircraft being monitored and evaluated by AIRMAN. Today's announcement solidifies the new US Airways' commitment to our customers to continuously improve aircraft reliability. We look forward to maintaining our great relationship with Airbus and the AIRMAN Support Team."

"Airbus Customer Services is very pleased to have the US Airways Airbus operation as the largest AIRMAN user," said Patrick Gavin, executive vice president, Airbus Customer Services. "We are looking forward to supporting them and further improving the success of US Airways maintenance operations."

AIRMAN is Airbus' real-time health monitoring tool that enables operators to optimize line maintenance and troubleshooting of aircraft. It is part of Air+ by Airbus, a comprehensive portfolio of products and services for fleet operations optimization. The operational benefits of AIRMAN are significant savings in maintenance and operations as delays and cancellations can be avoided, leading to an improved aircraft dispatch reliability.

The latest (V9) version of AIRMAN was released at end of November 2006. New features have been integrated into this latest version to help further increase the efficiency of the Maintenance Control Centre and line maintenance. Selected by 84 airlines, AIRMAN currently monitors more than 2,000 aircraft worldwide.

The recently merged US Airways and America West fly the largest fleet (205) of Airbus aircraft in the world, including single-aisle and wide-body aircraft. US Airways headquarters is based in Tempe, Ariz., with major international and domestic operations based out of Phoenix, Charlotte and Philadelphia. US Airways employs nearly 35,000 aviation professionals worldwide. US Airways, US Airways Shuttle and US Airways Express operate approximately 3,800 flights per day and serve more than 230 communities in the U.S., Canada, Europe, the Caribbean and Latin America. The new US Airways – the product of a merger between America West and US Airways in September 2005 – is a member of the Star Alliance, which provides connections for our customers to 841 destinations in 157 countries worldwide.

Airbus is an EADS company.