Blockchain Model for Enhancing Aircraft Maintenance Records Security

Abstract

This paper addresses the need to enhance the integrity and transparency of aircraft maintenance records in the aviation industry by using blockchain technologies. A physical aircraft maintenance logbook is susceptible to being lost or destroyed. A nonexistent aircraft maintenance logbook hurts the confidence in integrity and reputation of the aircraft. Furthermore, fraud can occur through forgery of Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) personnel signatures and the installation of non-official aircraft parts with implications to homeland security. The scope of this work is to develop a secure blockchain that can store aircraft service records and information in a digital distributed ledger. By keeping the maintenance logbook on a digital ledger, records can be stored indefinitely in a trusted environment with the integrity of records guaranteed. Additionally, to achieve being a distributed ledger, a consensus algorithm Proof of Elapsed Time (PoET) is used to display the global state accurately to all users. The proposed Secure Aircraft Maintenance Records (SAMR) blockchain uses the Linux Foundations open sourced software “Hyperledger” to facilitate an environment that mimics a real-world implementation. The blockchain logic for SAMR implementation was made in Python through creation of a permission-based blockchain for holding the maintenance records.