Aircraft maintenance event prediction using higher-level and lower-level system information

A method of maintaining an aircraft, comprising:

• storing real-time event information indicating faults in systems on the aircraft during a plurality of legs of flights of the aircraft;
• storing aircraft condition monitoring system data indicating conditions of the systems on the aircraft during the plurality of legs of flights of the aircraft;
• building a feature table comprising the real-time event information and the aircraft condition monitoring system data;
• extracting feature vectors from the feature table;
• applying a machine learning algorithm to the extracted feature vectors to generate a predicted maintenance event message that identifies a predicted maintenance event;
• and
• using the predicted maintenance event message to perform a maintenance operation on the aircraft.

An apparatus, comprising:

• a condition information storage configured to store higher-level condition information indicating conditions of systems on an aircraft during a plurality of legs of flights of the aircraft and lower-level condition information indicating the conditions of the systems on the aircraft during the plurality of legs of flights of the aircraft;
• a predicted maintenance event predictor configured to use the higher-level condition information and the lower level condition information to generate a predicted maintenance event message that identifies a predicted maintenance event, wherein using the higher-level condition information and the lower-level condition information to generate the predicted maintenance event message comprises building a feature table;
• and
• a predicted maintenance event message deliverer configured to send the predicted maintenance event message to maintenance personnel for use by the maintenance personnel to perform a maintenance operation on the aircraft.