An engine alone, for example, is likely to have as many as 5,000 elements monitored every second.
“It’s not Google big data, but it’s a lot of data,” says Bill Baumgarten, business development manager at UTCAerospace Systems, one of the major suppliers of high-tech sensors to the industry. Among the capabilities UTC sensors provide: monitoring the temperature of an engine part to flag even a five-degree variation from normal, or sensing a change from flight plan.