Last month, GE customers and partners convened at the annual Minds + Machines event for one of the defining moments of the Industrial Internet - General Electric CEO,  Jeff Immelt, projected that revenue from GE’s software services would nearly triple, to $15 billion, by 2020. As software continues to ‘eat the world’ GE is positioned at the nexus with its industrial domain expertise and industrial software capability. This unique position will provide exceptional outcomes for the next generation of customers.

GE Aviation made announcements during the conference, including further growth of the digital flight efficiency business with Southwest Airlines and Qantas.  GE’s Flight Efficiency will support Southwest’s fleet of nearly 700 Boeing 737 aircraft. For Qantas, the agreement will support one of the Asia-Pacific region's largest airline groupings, which includes Qantas, Qantas Freight, QantasLink and the Jetstar Group, operating almost 300 aircraft to 85 destinations. 

“Optimizing the performance of a fleet the size of Southwest’s requires smart technology that delivers big data in a consumable way. The GE Aviation Flight Analytics System will allow Southwest to continuously improve the reliability and efficiency of our operation,” said Mike Van de Ven, Southwest Airlines Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer. 

”We’re delighted to be expanding the long-standing relationship between Qantas and GE with a renewed focus on fuel efficiency,” said Alan Milne, Qantas’ Head of Fuel & Environment. “Greater fuel efficiency is an operational, financial and environmental priority for the Qantas Group, and at the heart of the biggest transformation of our business for two decades.  We’re big admirers of GE’s innovation in this area and we look forward to working even more closely together in years to come.”   

These advancements in data and analytic technologies are examples of where GE is taking Predix, the cloud-based platform for creating innovative, Industrial Internet applications that turn real-time operational data into actionable insights. 

“GE’s Flight Efficiency collects data generated by the aircraft and applies proprietary techniques that use historic intelligence to help drive airline business strategies,” said Alan Caslavka, president of Avionics & Digital Systems for GE Aviation.  “Aircraft performance analytics are used to reveal patterns, transforming data into actionable insights that improve operations.”