GE Aviation has entered a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Commercial Aircraft Corporation of China (COMAC) to digitally address the challenges of various aircraft operations.

Under the deal, both firms will use data and analytics to improve their respective operational efficiencies.

The partnership is further planning to explore and collaborate on digital solutions and applications on customer and product support monitoring and diagnostics, intelligent aircraft, and enhanced manufacturing fields.

GE and COMAC will also establish a joint team to launch pilot projects to confirm the technical trends of their previous collaborations.

“The partnership between COMAC and GE will result in digital solutions that will transform COMAC's operations."

GE Aviation chief digital officer Jim Daily said: “This agreement with COMAC will enable our teams of software architects and aviation domain experts to jointly develop digital solutions at GE's Shanghai digital collaboration centre.

“The partnership between COMAC and GE will result in digital solutions that will transform COMAC's operations all the way from brilliant manufacturing to advanced flight analytics to comprehensive fleet operations support.”

Furthermore, the partnership includes data scientists, software developers and architects from GE and COMAC for refining some of the ten billion data points produced by the aviation sector annually into solutions.

This effort is expected to help achieve better fleet intelligence and operational insights.

Around 100 airlines covering more than 10,000 aircraft are currently using GE Aviation Digital Solutions to receive navigation services, airline operations management, and flight and fuel analytics, as well as planning and recovery services.

In addition, GE Aviation has unveiled a new initiative, configuration data exchange, for the aviation industry.

The initiative connects aviation companies and allows for the digital exchange of major operations, maintenance and configuration data.