Rob Mather of IFS on Persisting 2026 Aviation Trends: From Cybersecurity to Space Travel

Welcome to the Aviation Pros podcast, the go-to platform for professionals in the aviation industry, powered by aviationpros. com, the leading source for comprehensive news, insights, and data on airport operations. Whether you're focused on airport management, improvement programs, ground handling, equipment, MRO, or FBO operations, we've got you covered with the expertise and resources you need to stay ahead. — Hello everyone and welcome to the Aviation Pros podcast. I'm Emily Gorsky, editor of Aircraft Maintenance Technology, and I'm here with Rob Mather, vice president of Aerospace and Defense Industries at IFS. Today, we're diving deeper into Rob's 2026 commercial aerospace outlook and looking closer at how trends and innovations in the overarching aerospace industry could create opportunity and relieve pressure for MROs and repair shops. Hi Rob, how are you doing today? — I'm doing great, Emily. Thanks very much. How are you doing? — Doing great, thanks. So, the first question I have for you is what aspects of your 2026 commercial aerospace outlook are most significant for MROs and maintenance personnel? — I think when we're talking about maintenance personnel specifically and when we're looking at sort of the immediate tangible effects to MROs, I think my answer is going to be AI and the predictions that we've made around AI co-pilots reaching the maintenance floor. So, essentially, we're talking about tools that will be imminently available to technicians inside of the MROs that are going to change the way that they're interacting with systems and make their lives hopefully quite a bit easier. And what that's going to do is drive efficiency for the MROs themselves to help them deal with some of the challenges that they're facing in the market these days. — Awesome. And going off of that, could you provide a little more insight on what industrial AI is? — So, when we talk about industrial AI, we're really talking about AI that is applied to solve the problems of I'll call it heavy industries or industries that have significant asset management scenarios and face real-world challenges that form a large portion of the key industrial base of the economy. So, specifically I work with the companies in aerospace and defense. So, when we're talking about that, it's trying to solve the specific business problems for those aerospace and defense companies to help them be more successful. And when we think about AI in general, there's a little bit of a blue-collar versus white-collar problem in terms of the AI solutions that have been produced thus far. So, in fact, looking at the numbers, 80 to 90% of AI solutions on the marketplace today are addressing white-collar type solutions. But if we look at sort of the global workforce distribution, it's about 60/40 blue-collar to white-collar with more specific regional differences. But if we look at aviation maintenance, it's 80 to 90% blue-collar. When you think about the numbers of technicians relative to the number of people that are working in the office inside of these organizations, the technicians are the key resource. So, when we talk about industrial AI, we need solutions that are helping the people that are driving those hardcore industries. Just think about the numbers, right? There's a lot of solutions out there. When we think about consumer AI, the vast majority of people are consuming it and they're thinking about like a chat GPT interaction or cloud or co-pilot or something that is typical form of generative AI, right? Like help me write this email, me generate this image. And when you think about those types of problems that are in the white-collar space, you might in some cases generate some significant efficiencies and we can talk about that a little bit later, but in other scenarios you're talking about you're helping 10 people instead of helping a thousand people. Right? So, one of the things to think about when we're talking about AI and industrial AI specifically is AI isn't just generative AI. That's just the hot button AI of the day because of the consumer exposure that we've got from like chat GPT since chat GPT burst on the scene. Now, when we think about AI at IFS, we divide it into two sort of

big categories. There's large language model driven presentation. And that has stuff in it like content generation. But it also has stuff like recommendations and contextual knowledge. And then we have another category that is predictive driven calculation. And here we're going into different aspects of AI that are really different from that generative AI that you're used to seeing. So, things like forecasting and simulation, optimization, and things like anomaly detection and pattern recognition. Right? So, when you start leveraging those aspects of AI, you can then start to build solutions that have a real material impact on the success of a business. — Thank you. Do you have any [clears throat] success stories from aerospace organizations that have integrated AI solutions from IFS? — Well, I'll tell you that AI in aerospace and in particular in commercial aviation is in its nascency. So, we've developed quite a few pilot programs and we have products available that are in the fielding stages, but the reality is that we're only able to hit a certain, let's say a tranche of solutions out in the into the field at this point because of the regulatory framework in terms of which we're working. So, right now we have to have solutions, particularly when we're talking about the technician, right? The technician is a regulated role. They have to be certified. licensed. And we have attributed our safety in the scenario of commercial aerospace to that licensing and certification process. So, we can't mess with that in today's landscape. So, what we need to do is what I'll call human at the core solutions when we're talking about the technician. And we can't unlock some of the potential of AI, some of the most powerful potential of AI until we shift the regulatory landscape a little bit in order to do that. And so, I think about it in terms of three waves of AI. We have we're in sort of wave one in commercial aviation right now, which is where we can tackle the non-regulated roles and give them tools to really help them. And we can help the regulated roles a little bit in such a way that we can sort of take the edges off some of the long processes and things, but all of the inherent decision-making still needs to be held by that licensed certified technician at the end of the day. So, we long-standing optimization solutions that can have a material impact on maintenance scheduling. There are other solutions that we have in our kit around technician assignment and optimization of work assigned. And even optimization of routes from a geographic perspective. We've also brought out co-pilots that can help navigate documentation, but the real power is going to happen when those co-pilots start to be able to do more interaction with the technician. So, rather than just helping them navigate through manuals, they're able to provide suggestions that the technician can take around what potential recurring faults there might be or what potential steps in the troubleshooting angle are most likely to be successful, what resolutions or repairs successful in terms of resolving faults, things like that. And so, we also have a solution actually that's pretty brand new that's around the induction of regulatory documents like ADs and SBs and being able to analyze the impacts to the fleet and sort of uncomplicate the wording and writing of some of those OEM and regulatory body documents to make them more easily to comprehend and be applied into a maintenance solution. That's really exciting. That's IFS comply. And so, in that scenario, you can more than double the efficiency of the engineer that's processing those documents. The impacts can be very impressive. — Wow, thank you. Yeah, that sounds very impressive. And kind of going off of that, thinking about regulations and dealing with high volumes of information, how does cybersecurity factor into this development and implementation? — Well, cybersecurity is impacted in terms of the advent of AI because of how AI may be structured and things around data sovereignty and control of data, but it's also a standalone issue. So, cyber warfare is more and more prominent in the world. If you pay attention in those circles, there have been an increasing number of cybersecurity

attacks, particularly either denial of service or privacy breaches that have basically extortion cybercrime, right? And so, public organizations become a target of that, particularly when you need to provide constant service, you have where downtime isn't an option to your customers, and where customer data privacy issues are important. So, first off, for commercial aviation, particularly in the airlines, both of those things are a big deal. MROs can be sometimes prominent brand names and large organizations that can potentially be a target. But the thing that has also changed recently is that those organizations that are doing it for commercial gain have shifted from just being criminal enterprises to being state-sponsored actors and sometimes state actors. And so, cyber warfare state-to-state becomes a real issue. And one of the targets, one of the key targets for cyber warfare, is critical infrastructure, right? So, can they tackle the power grid, for example? But you know what else is critical infrastructure? The air transport industry, right? If vaccines aren't getting where they need to go, or people other critical goods aren't getting where they need to go, that can be crippling to a nation or an economy or the people, right? So, more and more, I think that organizations within commercial aviation are realizing or should be realizing that they're targets and they're targets not just from criminal enterprises, but also potentially from state-sponsored actors or state actors in the event of conflict. Another thing that should be considered when we're talking about cybersecurity is that cybersecurity regulations are ramping up. Particularly, we're seeing that in government and defense. And the great example comes from the US, where we have the CMMC framework that has become mandatory for cybersecurity controls and things like the FedRAMP program for cloud-offered software becoming mandatory for anybody trying to provide software into the US government. Right? And as governments look to reduce vulnerabilities to critical infrastructure attacks, these regulatory frameworks are going to become more and more prevalent around the globe. And that means that it's not only a matter of being proactive, there'll be a new regulation in an already highly regulated industry that will need to be complied with from a cybersecurity perspective. — Thank you. And now I'm going to switch gears just a little bit into another area that you spoke about, which was 3D printing. So, the question I have is, what hurdles still stand in the way of MROs and repair shops adopting 3D printing and other similar solutions for part shortages for everyday use? — To be honest, there's quite a few hurdles that exist that need to be overcome. And the first and foremost, it's the issue of quality control. Right? So, when you're taking something outside of the certified factory setting and you're trying to do it in situ, which is that's the ultimate power of 3D printing, right? It's on-demand production of materials at the site where you need them. But if you're the MRO and you're trying to do that manufacturing yourself and you're trying to manufacture a part that was certified elsewhere, then you haven't gone through all of the rigor that an OEM has gone through for quality control testing and evaluation and ensuring that all of the production processes are adequate from a safety perspective, right? And the second aspect of that is the OEMs are protective of the ability to manufacture that for good reason because that's how they make their money is by producing those goods, right? Now, what I should say is both of those apply in only certain circumstances. So, there's other scenarios in which we can make use of 3D printing in the near term and then gradually expand as we change sort of our outlook on the space. So, what I mean by that is 3D printing is already certified in certain scenarios at the OEM at the manufacturer, right? So, different engine manufacturers are already using approved 3D printed parts or additive manufacturing processes to create parts that are in engines that are certified to fly today. But that's again under the strict control at the OEM. So, that's

fabulous for dealing with complex geometries. It doesn't necessarily get us to that on-location, on-demand panacea, the future that we're looking at eventually with 3D printing. But the other aspect that we can address with that is non-safety critical parts. So, we can think about things like interior panels. And let me put it this way. If we get our stuff in order, there should be no reason why anybody's tray table is broken in the future on the seatback because a non-safety critical piece should be able to be manufactured in place on demand as that's needed and there should be no part shortage waiting for that spare tray table to arrive essentially. Now, there's a lot of steps to get there, of course. And so, as we sort of categorize those different types of parts that we can address some in situ, some at the OEM, as we certify more processes, that becomes more prevalent in the marketplace and unlocking more of the potential. Another thing is parts for old aircraft. There was a story going around, I'm probably going to get the numbers wrong, but an example of government wastage in the US was always holding up a soap dish from a military transport aircraft and saying this silly little plastic soap dish cost $130. Part of the reason it cost $130 is all of the testing and rigor and everything that has to go on anything that's flying in an aircraft. So, it's a little bit disingenuous to do that. But the other aspect of it is because that platform in particular was a really old platform and they stopped making that soap dish. So, in order to get a new soap dish, they have to spin up the whole factory, well, not the whole factory, but all of the tools in order to produce that again. Sometimes those tools have been destroyed. They have to rebuild the casts or the tooling in order to be able to produce those parts for aircraft that are older platforms. And at that point, that becomes a burden to the manufacturer and it customer. They don't really want to spin up all those tools in order to produce a couple of soap dishes for a line of aircraft that they're not producing anymore, right? That's not how they're going to make their money. And that little plastic soap dish is the exact kind of thing you can translate into 3D printing. So, you say, "Okay, I stopped making those soap dishes 30 years ago. Here's the file. Run it through your resin 3D printer and make your own soap dish. That's fine. It meets all the specs as long as you use this resin and use this process and use this file, you're fine. " And so, it can solve a bunch of the problems that we have in the industry around spare parts for older platforms in order to be able to do that, particularly when as 3D printing and additive manufacturing tools and processes continue to get better and better over time, so that metal printing becomes better and you start to be able to tackle more and more parts. Forget about sending that file to the end customer. Means, me as the OEM, if I get a request to produce that part, I don't have to change everything around. I just change the file that I'm sending to the same machines, and it just prints a different piece. Right? So, it can really help with those types of challenges we have as an industry. — Yeah, definitely. That's very cool. Thinking about the different stages that these uh parts have to go through, especially the safety critical parts, can you elaborate on the digital threads and what those might look like for an aircraft component that's been 3D printed? — Well, the That term digital thread was actually coined, if I recall correctly, at Lockheed Martin when they were producing the F-35. And the idea was to link the design process through the manufacturing process in that scenario. So, you come up with a design and you think it's great and you try to do your best to make it manufacturable, for lack of a better term, and you send that design to the floor and they come back and they say, "Oh, there's no way we can make the tooling make this particular kind of inside cut, right? It's just never going to happen. So, you got to round this corner, or you got to square off this edge, or something that means that it can actually be manufactured in the real world. And there's always that feedback loop. And then, as you go through the production run, there's a feedback loop that is Oh, it's actually more efficient from a production run. We can drop the cost down 10% if we make this minor change. So, the idea there was that you have a continuous loop through the manufacturing process back to the design files for them to be able to modify the engineering files, the drawings and designs, to be able to reflect the input

from the actual manufacturing process through that cycle. Now, we would argue that today that digital thread should continue through the operation of the asset, and the maintenance bring all of the in-field contextual information back into the design and manufacture of the asset as well. And that's what modern systems can do, but that's not really pertinent to your question, right? The question's about how we take that in the context of 3D manufacturing. Well, in 3D manufacturing, the design file is the output. Right? You're taking the design file, you're turning it into a set of specific instructions for the machine, that the machine is going to consume and produce exactly what's specified. So, the maintenance of that digital file to reflect input from production and the field becomes critical because, at the end of the day, that's exactly what you're going to produce. There isn't a separate translation step, like there used to be in the old days, in this digital landscape, right? That you used to get the files and then change them into, "Okay, well, what that means in terms of me for manufacturing is this. Now, it's one in the same in the context of 3D printing. Now, it doesn't mean that there isn't some sort of the format translation and everything else in order to make sure that the machines are understanding the instructions, but it's all a direct link is what I should say. — Awesome. Thank you. And before I move on to my last little section, switching gears one more time, would you like to elaborate on your principle about how the digital thread should continue through maintenance and retirement? — Sure, we can do that. A really good example for this concept is the blue data thread from Rolls-Royce and their program on the engine intelligent engine and their total care program. And what they're able to do is in a scenario where you've signed up for total care on one of their engines, they connect the data from the maintenance system of the airline that's flying that engine around and it provides information back to them about what specific parts have been installed and what conditions has the asset actually been flown in. Because when you set up the deadlines for your maintenance programs as an OEM, you have to take sort of the worst-case scenario into account when you're setting those deadlines. But not everybody is flying in a sandstorm at full power all of the time, right? So, when you actually contextualize how an asset has actually been flown, how an engine has been utilized in this case, you get a whole bunch of information that says this has not been flown at case scenario and it the worst-case scenario by this amount. So, systems like our Mphasis Cloud for Aviation Maintenance are the systems that are gathering that information, contextualizing it as the maintenance and engineering system of the airline, and we connect back to Rolls-Royce to send that information to them, but then we can close the loop. So, Rolls-Royce can look at that information that they're getting from the field, from all kinds of sensor data, all kinds of maintenance flight condition data, and they can do two things. They can use that loop that we already talked about to take that information and improve design, but in the immediate scenario, when they're talking about total care of that engine, they can say, "Oh, based on our magic black box that we've certified with the FAA with its amazing artificial intelligence, we can tell you that you can actually fly that engine 50 more hours than we told you could in the original documentation. " And what they can then do is push that information back out to the maintenance system, and we can adjust the deadlines so that you can keep that engine on the aircraft longer, aircraft flying longer without a disruption. And what it ends up doing in the grand scheme of things is reducing the total amount of maintenance that's performed on that engine. So, that saves money for the customer, that in this case the airline, by keeping that aircraft flying as long as possible without having to swap out that engine, and it saves money for the total care provider, in this case Rolls-Royce, because they don't have to do as many maintenance events on those engines, and those maintenance events cost millions of dollars. So, really it's a win-win of being able to understand what the real-world conditions there are. And the added benefit is understanding that maintenance data in the context of the real-world information lets them change the maintenance program, but it also can impact the design. Say, "Oh, these readings are indicating that these parts are actually wearing faster than we thought It should be, so we can make this change in the manufacturing process

to be able to ensure that or make this change in the design to be able to make sure that we're getting the life that we expect out of those components. — Thank you. That is very cool. I wanted to switch gears one more time for my last couple questions. Talk about another development potential for MRO, which was space travel. Can you speak more on how space travel may impact opportunities for MROs? — Yeah. I'm a little bit of a space nerd, so any chance to talk about space I will jump at. — Awesome. — What we need to think about is we're sort of at the early stages of a new era in space, and we can refer to it in broader terms as the commercialization of space. That sort of doesn't cover all the bases, but it's good enough for talking about. And when you really think about it, there's a few things that are impacting that. So, launch volumes are way up, astronomical increases in the total number of launches, and that's because of satellite networks like SpaceX and their programs. But, it also is in part because the launch costs have come down. And the reason that down is primarily because of the reuse of launch vehicles. Okay? So, you think about again SpaceX and others that are reusing the vast majority of the launch vehicle that's sending satellites or other payloads, could be astronauts these days, into space. And what that means is, as soon as you start reusing things, you have to maintain them. So, we're changing from a paradigm in space where most things were considered consumed every time they were sent up into space into a paradigm where we have to take those things that have been used, they've accrued utilization hours and suffered re-entry temperatures and high temperatures at launch, and we need to make them safe to fly again the next time. So, as those volumes continuing to increase, the industry has to mature and start to do things like we've done in commercial aviation for a long time around formal maintenance programs, formal life limits on certain things that can be reused a certain amount of times, but not beyond that. And so, you start to need to have organizations that can provide the services in order to maintain those things, and also tools to be able to manage that maintenance from a digital perspective and an execution perspective. But, it doesn't stop with launch vehicles, either, because launch costs have come way down and continue to come down. What that means is the things that are in orbit or on orbit, depending on the language that you speak in your local geography, which version of English, those assets have previously, like the launch vehicles, been regarded as consumable. They have a finite life, and when they're done, they're done. And in previous days, like if we think way back to the Hubble Space Telescope, we had to do a correction to the lens, so we had to send up a new mission to be able to make that correction. That was a huge deal, right? Cuz it was sending another sort of consumable mission after the first one that was not accounted for, and that's a huge budget implication in that kind of scenario. But, as the launch costs come down, but the asset that we're launching, those satellites, for example, the cost of those remains high, suddenly it becomes more cost-effective to keep those things in space operating, rather than letting them die. So, there's a couple of things that we can do like in the advent of self-healing materials. So, you can have layers of resin that when something gets punctured, the resin flows and fills the gap or you can have cellular materials that are kind of similar where if damage is suffered, it releases those resins and compounds that can then plug the gap and harden and sort of heal the object. But, that doesn't deal with sort of the complex mechanical repairs. So, now there are programs that are attempting to do in-orbit or on-orbit servicing, which can include just refueling so that as soon as your fuel is depleted, you don't fall out of orbit and burn up in the atmosphere. But, also potentially mechanical repairs. So, there are programs to have space robots launched that can replace components or do repairs on some of these assets in orbit. So, now you have a really, really complicated maintenance process and potential for a servicing and maintenance schedule that needs to be maintained. And so, you have a whole other aspect of repair that can come to the fore.

— Wow, thank you. So, thinking about technicians or maintenance professionals who currently work in aviation MRO, maybe learning about all this new development, how could they prepare to maybe work on future spacecraft in maintenance? — That's a really good question. I don't know off the top of my head about any extra special skills that a technician would need in order to be able to transfer their skills, right? The aviation maintenance technicians are highly trained, highly educated individuals, and they have a lot of skills that translate. Like, if you know how to do composite material work on an airframe, then you can a space vehicle, right? So, the materials might change a little bit. The volumes will change a fair bit. You're probably still dealing with scenarios like an engine technician right now at least, where you're still using rocket fuel rocket motors rather than like a turbine style moving parts scenario. So, the specific type of propulsion system will be different, but I think a lot of the skills should be transferable. So, I think it's really a matter of keeping your ear to the ground to find out about these organizations that will start springing up probably initially as part of the OEM organizations, the folks that build the launch vehicles, but as space tourism and other aspects of commercial space travel become more and more prevalent. I know that there are dozens of new companies waiting or are marching towards being able to launch in the commercial space tourism market. So, as the volumes will continue to increase, and that inevitably will mean that there will be a specialization that will occur. And so, not all of those organizations are going to have the capability to do all of that maintenance in-house. So, there will be eventually companies that spring up in order to provide maintenance as a service to the space industry. Now, I think we're stretching beyond the 2026 predictions mandate now, but — Just a little bit. — Yeah, just a bit. But, a lot of times it's sooner than you think, really. So, if it's something that people are interested in doing, just pay attention. I'm sure it's going to be emerging really soon. — Yes, it's so exciting. Thank you. Those were all the big questions I had for you today, but is there anything else you would want to chat about? — The fact that we live in really exciting times. There are a lot of pressures, particularly on MROs from the skilled workforce shortage in particular, but also like the unstable global supply chains. And what I hope we've been able to highlight is that although it's not 100% of the answer, we still need to address the technician shortage. build more robust supply chains. Technology can help. Technology like modern systems and the advent of AI can enable a technician to be more efficient, to do more, to not waste time. For example, coming down out of the aircraft and going and requesting a part at a parts window, that should be a thing of the past. They should be able to do that on a mobile device today and have the part come to them. Cuz they're the most precious resource we have as an MRO, right? So, we want them to be as productive as possible all the time and also to try and remove some of the drudgery around paperwork and other things and get [clears throat] them doing the fun stuff of actually fixing things. And technology can really help with that, particularly when we deploy it effectively inside of our organizations. And similarly, there are things on the horizon that can help with some of the supply chain challenges that we have. So, although those challenges are real and they will be with us for a long time, there are things out there that we can use to help. — Awesome. Perfect. Thank you so much, Rob. And thank you for joining us today. It's been so great having you and I really appreciate you taking the time to come talk to me. — My pleasure, Emily. Thank you very much. — Thanks for tuning in to the Aviation Pros podcast, produced by Endeavor Business Media, a division of Endeavor B2B. Stay ahead in airport operations and leadership by subscribing to our Airport Business Daily newsletter and our monthly Airport Business Insider newsletter, only available to key decision makers in aviation. And don't forget to explore even more at aviationpros. com, the home of exclusive content for aviation professionals like yourself. I'm Joe Petrie. We'll catch you next time.