The majority of revenue in the aviation industry comes from air travel, so the more aircrafts in the air at one time, the better. When issues prevent aircrafts from flying, this has a huge impact on the industry. COVID, for instance, had a huge impact on the aviation industry across 2020-2021, with the aviation industry coming to a standstill.

Outside of COVID, businesses have to be prepared to quickly repair and replace aircraft parts at short notice to prevent an impact on scheduled flights from an aircraft that’s become out of action. However, the storage of spare parts for aircrafts is expensive, especially as a fallback option. The alternative, ordering in spare parts while the plane is grounded, could cost as much as $500,000 per day.

So how do you balance these opposing risks? Previously no one knew a suitable answer. The industry has been struggling to manage a complex web of local and long distance deliveries for spare parts, and, if businesses leave expensive parts in storage, the clock is ticking on how quickly they can use or sell them.

Satair, one of the leading global providers of innovative aftermarket services and solutions for the civil aerospace industry, has pushed forward to solve this huge dilemma in the aviation maintenance industry.

Satair’s aim of solving this dilemma involved undergoing a digital transformation — allowing them to break out of the status quo within the aviation industry.  

Working with Merkle, the concept of opening a marketplace was agreed as the best way to show Satair as a world-leader in innovation within the aviation industry. From this idea, a fully-fledged online marketplace integrated into the brand’s existing Satair Market, allows any brand within the aviation industry to resell used or surplus aircraft parts. 

Within the marketplace, Satair handles all the complex regulatory steps, and each airline becomes a potential stockholder for others. Removing risks with inventory, where it changes from being a liability to an investment, minimises waste and increases the chance of finding suppliers who can deliver quickly. 

Satair is now in a unique position within the aviation industry, because the marketplace platform brings new revenue streams as Satair has become an intermediary in the value exchange, for example, between competing airlines, as they own the data on Satair Market they have invaluable information and now offer advice on things such as fair-market pricing. All these elements are what has made Satair one of the leading global providers for the civil aerospace industry.