Officials at the airline Air Canada in Montreal needed a design tool to monitor aircraft fleet for faults and reduce maintenance downtime.

The PowerTier software tool from Persistence Software in San Mateo, Calif., met their needs.

"PowerTier is enabling us to design an integrated diagnostic tool to analyze aircraft maintenance information, identify potential problems, and advise on a consistent and expedient course of action," says Dave Clarke, decision support specialist for Air Canada. "We expect IDS to reduce the amount of time that aircraft are grounded, enabling us to significantly decrease our costs and improve passenger satisfaction."

The Air Canada Integrated Diagnostic System (IDS) will help line maintenance technicians make time-critical decisions concerning aircraft maintenance, and enable the maintenance control center to monitor their aircraft fleet for faults.

Experts will use PowerTier to develop a server application that integrates near-real-time mainframe operational data, an operational data store, thin Java client applications, and artificial intelligence decision support components. Developing the IDS software, which uses artificial intelligence technologies, were experts at the National Research Council of Canada in cooperation with the airline. — J.M.

For more information on PowerTier or Persistence Software contact Daisy Biggers by phone at 650-372-3607, by e-mail at dbiggers@persistence.com, or on the World Wide Web at http://www.persistence,com.