PARIS, FRANCE — Franco-Italian turboprop aircraft manufacturer ATR and Safran Landing Systems are working on a new system called ‘Smart Lander’, an innovative landing gear diagnostics to optimize the manufacturer’s response times in the event of hard landings, and enable aircraft to be quickly returned to service.

The service will be the first of its kind in the aviation industry and rely on machine learning technology. Based on hundreds of thousands of hard landing simulations, Smart Lander issues recommendations to operators on the maintenance actions to be taken according to the hardness of the landing and to the load level sustained by the landing gear.

Aircraft can subsequently be permitted to continue their commercial operations or, alternatively, be sent to a maintenance base. This process takes less than an hour, compared to over a week previously.