Japan Airlines Co., Ltd. and Bridgestone Corporation have expanded the application of tire wear prediction technology to implement scheduled tire replacement operations for large jet aircraft, including the Airbus A350-900, which has been operated by JAL since May 2024.
Aircraft tires must ensure safety and security under harsh conditions, including heavy loads, high speeds, and a wide range of temperatures. Typically, aircraft tires need to be replaced after several hundred takeoffs and landings. However, the rate of tire wear varies depending on factors such as usage conditions for a given aircraft or at a given airport. This variability has made scheduling tire replacements difficult, leading to unscheduled replacements that can result in sudden needs to replace multiple tires simultaneously.
To address this issue, Bridgestone partnered with JAL to develop operating procedures that enable scheduled tire replacements. By combining JAL’s aircraft insights and flight data with Bridgestone’s tire expertise and digital tire wear prediction technologies, highly accurate predictions of the optimal time to replace tires have been formulated. Since May 2020, these procedures have been in place for regional jet aircraft operated by J-AIR Corporation.