Flight Object Sharing Capability Using Blockchain

This paper describes a concept and a prototype for sharing flight information using blockchain technology. Providing all stakeholders access to complete, consistent, and up-to-date information about each flight facilitates efficient aviation operations. Existing flight information exchange methods are limited; the concept of a “flight object” that provides a complete solution for all stakeholders has yet to be realized.A complete solution requires either a centrally administered data store, which is unsuitable for an international context, or a distributed ledger. Distributed ledgers are at the heart of blockchain technology, which makes this technology a good match for implementing the flight object.

The authors have proven it is possible to provide a complete flight object solution using blockchain technology by demonstrating a prototype based on Tendermint: an open-source blockchain implementation. The demonstrated solution offers additional benefits like strong integrity guarantees and role-based update permissions enforcement. Prototype performance indicates a production implementation is likely to provide sufficient speed and capacity to support global aviation operations for flight planning negotiation, as well as possible future concepts such as trajectory-based operations and international flow management. The paper’s conclusion discusses steps necessary for the flight object sharing capability to be adopted as the basis for a real-world international aviation solution.