Running Aviation Maintenance for 40 Airlines at BOS Aerospace

In aviation maintenance, a system has to satisfy the regulator and keep every part and tool traceable. It also has to work for an engineer who has 25 minutes to clear a defect before the aircraft departs.

Dr Sajjad Hussain is Head of Maintenance at BOS Aerospace (BOSA), a third-party line maintenance organisation. BOSA is approved by the UK Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) and the European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA). Sajjad has spent 26 years in aviation engineering. He started as a trainee engineer at Monarch and went on to senior roles at Etihad Airways, Oman Air, Bombardier, Ryanair, Wizz Air, and British Airways.

In this episode of the Comparesoft Maintenance Management Podcast, Sajjad explains how aviation maintenance systems work on the line and what happens after a system has been selected. He also explains why he built his own tool to see the whole operation.

From Hangar to Line: Where Aviation Maintenance Happens

Aviation maintenance splits into base (hangar) maintenance and line maintenance, which is the live operation at the airport between flights. Sajjad started in base maintenance before moving to the line.

“Sometimes the turnaround times are only 25 minutes,” he says. “Engineers will review the tech logs and any faults the crew have reported. You do your visual inspections, and then you fix it. And if you can’t fix it, you legally defer the aircraft.”

Deferrals run through the Minimum Equipment List (MEL), which sets out what can be inoperative and for how long. “A reading light might be 10 days,” he explains. “Key systems like hydraulic systems can’t wait that long.” Knowing the MEL inside out, Sajjad adds, “is a huge part of the line engineer’s skills.”

Every release ends with a Certificate of Release to Service (CRS), and the signature is personal. “When I sign a CRS, it’s my signature, not the company’s,” he says. “When you do sign a CRS, picture people walking up the airbridge as they’re coming in. That’s why there are no shortcuts in this job.”

What a Third-Party Aviation Maintenance Provider Does

A third-party line maintenance provider acts as an airline’s engineering department at airports where the airline has no engineers of its own. Airlines can’t base staff at every airport they fly to, so they contract the work out.

“If an airline flies into Gatwick Airport once a day, it makes no sense to employ a full team at that station,” Sajjad explains. “Our engineers will meet the aircraft, do the transit or daily check, clear any defects and sign the CRS. For those airlines at that airport, we are the engineering department.”

That model brings complexity most maintenance teams never face. “We work through each airline’s own procedures and manuals, often in their own systems,” he continues. “The same engineer might certify a wide-body aircraft for one airline in the morning and a narrow-body for another a couple of hours later.”

Why No Single Aviation Maintenance System Does Everything

No single system covers everything the regulator expects you to trace. That list includes the work done on the aircraft, the qualifications of your people, where parts came from, and storage conditions such as temperature and humidity. “There’s traceability for everything,” Sajjad says, “and there isn’t one system that can actually do all that.”

At BOSA, several systems run side by side, with a Maintenance, Repair, and Overhaul (MRO) system at the centre:

“Any given engineer would not just work with the systems in BOSA,” he explains. “They’ll also have to work with the systems the airlines have implemented. There are many, many systems.”

The Double Data Entry Problem between Airline and MRO Systems

Double data entry happens because airline systems and BOSA’s MRO system are kept apart on purpose. Engineers record work on tablets linked to a central server, but that data can’t flow between the two sides.

“The airline system will not necessarily communicate with ours,” Sajjad says. “There aren’t any APIs built, and there’s a whole reason behind it. There are a lot of information security regulations that kick in. We can’t tap into their information, they can’t tap into ours. That’s where the duplication happens.”

For Sajjad, this is the biggest frustration. “Every piece of work our engineers do is recorded in the airline system and then ours,” he explains. “On a tight turnaround, the engineer doesn’t really have time to duplicate all that information. And every time you enter the same information twice, there’s a chance the two records don’t match.”

Getting Value from an Aviation MRO System after Selection

Most of the value in BOSA’s MRO system has come after go-live, from modules it wasn’t bought for. BOSA selected and implemented MRO Pro about nine months before Sajjad joined, mainly for invoicing. He calls it “a very, very good tool for invoicing, which makes sense for a business billing around 40 different airlines.”

His job has been what comes next. “A system like MRO Pro has many, many modules in it, and most of the value sits in the ones beyond invoicing,” he says. “Since I joined, I’ve been bringing those modules into use and working directly with the MRO Pro team to shape them around how the line maintenance operation actually works. It’s in partnership with the vendor, not a one-off install.”

The same holds for any maintenance system, whether it’s an MRO system in aviation or a Computerised Maintenance Management System (CMMS) in another sector. The reason you bought it is rarely the only value it can deliver.

Where the MRO System Earns Its Place

Sajjad points to three areas where the system proves its worth in aviation maintenance:

• Parts traceability. “In aviation, every part has to be traceable back to its birth, through every repair, every aircraft it’s been fitted to, so that if anything ever goes wrong, you can trace it.”
• Tooling control. The system records which tool was used on which aircraft and by whom, and flags any tool that falls out of calibration.
• Authorisations. “It knows which engineer holds which licence, type ratings and customer authorisations, and when they expire. So it can tell you who’s legally allowed to certify an aircraft and what training someone needs next.”

Where the MRO System Falls Short: Planning and Flexibility

Planning is the weak spot. “You can put XYZ engineer on that day, but it just sits there. It does nothing with that information,” he says.

Flexibility is part of the same gap. “When a roster needs changing at five in the morning because someone’s called in sick, a spreadsheet is updated in seconds,” Sajjad explains. “A lot of what I’m working on with the MRO Pro team is closing that gap, so the system fits line maintenance, where everything changes by the hour, and not just a hangar, where the plan holds for a week.”

Building a Live View of the Aviation Maintenance Operation

Sajjad built his own dashboard because no system he’d used showed the whole operation live, on one screen. The data already exists, from airline flight schedules to engineer rosters, qualifications, and authorisations. It just sits in different places.

He has worked with established aviation maintenance platforms such as AMOS and TRAX, and none filled the gap. “There isn’t one that gives me that edge, where all the information goes in and it tells me ahead of time what my operation is going to look like tomorrow at 2am.”

Using basic coding skills and AI, he built a dashboard that shows every flight, every station, and whether a qualified engineer is available to meet it.

“I’m not just asking the system, do we have someone at Gatwick at 2pm?” he explains. “I’m asking, do we have someone at Gatwick at 2pm who can actually legally release that aircraft, a Boeing 777, maybe? Those are very different questions, and the second one is the one that really matters.”

The dashboard also shows the shape of the day: peak hours, spare capacity, and pinch points where only one engineer can certify an aircraft. “Instead of finding out about a problem when the station calls because the aircraft is waiting, I see the stretch coming hours or days ahead,” he says. “It moves you from reacting to planning.” His deputy and station managers now use it too.

Driving System Adoption through Competency in Aviation Maintenance

In aviation maintenance, using the system is a legal requirement. Engineers must be trained on BOSA’s systems and on each customer’s systems, and every new airline goes through a management of change process first.

Training alone doesn’t qualify anyone. “Before the compliance department issues them the authorisation to certify, they have to be competency assessed,” Sajjad explains. “They sit an oral board exam with the compliance team and the maintenance management team. That will indicate whether the engineer is ready or needs more training.”

The same process applies to every new aircraft type, authorisation, and system. “When the lives of people are involved, it’s a fair system,” he says. “Your training never stops.”

Where AI Fits in Aviation Maintenance

In Sajjad’s operation, AI speeds up analysis. Across the industry, its biggest role is predictive maintenance.

AI helps him write and fix the code behind his tools, and one of those tools uses AI directly. It’s a cross-training model that compares the capability matrix (who holds which aircraft types and authorisations) against future demand. “For example, this station is thin on the Boeing 787 next summer, these three engineers are closest to being ready, and this one would give us the most resilience,” he says. “A person still makes that decision, but the analysis that used to take days now takes minutes. It isn’t robots fixing aircraft. It’s taking the data we already have and turning it into decisions faster.”

Predictive maintenance is the bigger story. “Modern aircraft are literally flying data centres,” Sajjad says. Small signals in that data, such as a valve taking slightly longer to open, can flag a component before it fails. Without that warning, the failure could leave an aircraft Aircraft on Ground (AOG) at an outstation. “The airline knows weeks ahead, orders the parts, plans the manpower and changes the component before it fails. Passengers never know.”

He is just as clear about the limits. “AI can predict the failure, but it can’t sign the CRS for you,” he says. “In aviation, the accountability still sits with a licensed human being, and I think it should stay that way.” Data quality matters too: “If your records are poor, AI will just give you confident wrong answers.”

Stepping Up to Aviation Maintenance Leadership

Sajjad’s move to Head of Maintenance taught him that engineering and leadership are separate skills. “We spend five to seven years training someone to be an engineer and about five minutes preparing them to be a leader,” he says.

He says the people side is the hardest part. “There’s no maintenance manual for any of that,” he explains. “You support someone through a bereavement, and the next day you hold them to the same standard as everyone else, because the aircraft doesn’t know what kind of week they’re having.”

His advice for engineers moving into management:

• Remove yourself from the equation. “It’s not about you anymore. It’s all about your team and your people.”
• Learn the language of finance. “If I tell a board I need three more engineers because it’s safer, I get a polite nod. If I show them the risk and cost of a delay against what three engineers cost, now I’m having a business conversation.”
• Understand the people you lead. Newer engineers “will pick up on a new system faster than anyone,” he says, and they want purpose and regular feedback.