Data Migration in the Airline Industry

A leading airline undertook a large data migration project involving various MRO systems such as Maxi Merlin (WIZARD), Trax and Maintenix. The project also required aircraft part transfers between legacy MRO systems and Maintenix.

Relevant subject matter expertise included topics such as ATA chapter breakdown, tracked component breakdown, batch and serialized parts that were specific to fleet operations, as well as part numbers and applicability.

Pinnacle initially developed comprehensive requirements documentation incl. a formal BRD, source-to-target mappings, data models, data validation docs, etc.  Key definitions for aircraft maintenance and support included maintenance programs, blocks, reference documentation, component and aircraft requirements, job cards, and task links.

Post-data extraction, we established loadable templates such as parts inventory, aircraft configuration, positions for components, etc. to migrate aircrafts into the target system. Data synchronizing was critical because the data was dynamic and transitioning aircraft would be operational. This required multiple data sources in both MRO systems to be synchronized for up to one week. Data included flight logs, part changes, task completions and defects.

Finally, we developed extract-transform-load (ETL) processes to load data from MRO systems to the enterprise data warehouse for analytical reporting. Validation and cleansing of legacy data was accomplished through automated techniques.

This mission critical project was accomplished on-time and under budget, meeting all client requirements. Pinnacle has continued to serve this client on multiple engagements over many years and remains a valued professional services partner.