Frick SmartMark RFID Tags Help Delta Air Lines Fly Through Safety Checks

William Frick & Company, a leading supplier of customized identification products including Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tags, announced that Delta Air Lines has selected their custom RFID tags to address Maintenance, Repair and Overhaul (MRO) needs for their flyable safety equipment. By using SmartMark RFID tags from Frick to streamline the audit process for safety equipment, Delta improved inspection time from approximately 10 man hours to less than 3 minutes. Delta maintains safety and compliance, while realizing significant time and cost savings, while capturing more data.
Frick’s SmartMark RFID Oxygen Generator tags provide Delta with valuable electronic data enabling just-in-time inventory management that was not previously available. According to Rick Lewis, business analyst for Delta, RFID technology drastically reduces the time and effort needed for safety and maintenance checks, which has lead to profound cost savings, as featured in the February/March 2013 issue of Aircraft IT MRO Journal.
Previously, Delta personnel spent countless hours conducting tedious inspection processes to ensure that no safety items remained in service beyond their expiration date. Multiplying this by Delta’s entire fleet of more than 700 aircraft, that equates to a visual inspection of approximately 140,000 life vests and more than 40,000 oxygen generators a year. Using RFID, flight attendants can check an entire plane in less than sixty seconds.
Frick SmartMark RFID tags for aviation are AS5678 certified, as required by the FAA. The Delta solution incorporates RFIDAeroCheck software to track and monitor the parts, reducing maintenance turnaround time by up to 99 percent, increasing the accuracy of safety checks, as well as enabling improved on-time performance for Delta flights.
Frick SmartMark RFID Oxygen Generator tags designed for Delta provide 15-foot read ranges and quick read times using a portable RFID reader. SmartMark tags are also available for application to life vest boxes/pouches, passenger oxygen masks, medical kits, and many other emergency equipment items.