How Federation-Based Collaboration Works in a Real Aviation Environment
FACIS collaborates with industry partners to test ideas and develop Proofs of Concept(PoC) for future federated digital ecosystems. Through the FACIS Lab, organizations can explore interoperability and experiment with new forms of data exchange. Together with the aviation industry, we created a PoC to see how federation-based collaboration works in real aviation environments.
Discover how the Aviation Federation enables trusted digital exchange across the aviation ecosystem and watch the video on how to onboard a partner to your aviation federation.
We developed a Proof of Concept for an Aviation Federation: a federated digital ecosystem that allows organizations to collaborate digitally while keeping full control of their systems and securely exchanging selected data and services even across different IT landscapes.
An Aviation Federation connects airlines, manufacturers, service providers, and authorities in a shared but decentralized network. Instead of isolated systems and data silos, organizations can securely exchange data, services, and digital credentials – while staying fully independent and in control.
This approach is inspiring because it shows how trust, interoperability, and collaboration can scale across a complex and highly regulated industry like aviation.
The aviation industry is still struggling with major digital challenges:
- Isolated systems and data silos
- Lack of interoperability between organizations
- Missing trust frameworks for secure data exchange
- Complex onboarding of new partners
- High integration effort and low flexibility
These limitations slow down innovation, increase costs, and make cross-company collaboration difficult.
The Aviation Federation introduces a federated architecture for secure digital collaboration. The result is a federated model that supports secure interaction, improves interoperability between systems, and reduces technical and organizational complexity while preserving each participant’s autonomy.
Verify
Verify identities using Verifiable Credentials
Exchange
Exchange services and data across organizations
Trust
Join a trusted ecosystem without giving up control
Onboard
Onboard new partners quickly and securely
The Aviation Federation is designed for all aviation stakeholders, including:
- Airlines
- Aircraft manufacturers and suppliers
- Maintenance, Repair & Overhaul (MRO) providers
- Airports and ground service operators
- Regulatory authorities and certification bodies
- Digital service providers (data, AI, IoT, digital twins)
Any organization that needs secure, trusted digital collaboration can become part of the federation.
Partner onboarding is one concrete example of how the Aviation Federation works in practice. For this use case, we developed a dedicated Federation Architecture Pattern (FAP) and created a demonstration video to show the full process end to end. The onboarding itself is fully digital and guided by the FACIS Partner Portal.
Watch the video to see this onboarding use case in action.
- 00:05 Introduction
- 00:28 Start Onboarding
- 01:10 Verify your company details
- 01:38 Type of certificate
- 02:08 Upload your certificate files
- 02:35 Create a new decentralized Indentifier (DID)
- 03:24 Create Verifiable Credentials (VCs)
- 03:39 Select Gaia-X Digital Clearing House Version
- 05:25 Select Clearing House
- 06:05 Check or Correct VCs
- 06:37 View and Download Onboarding Results
- 07:03 Terms and Conditions of Participation
- 07:40 Save the Credential
- 08:02 Issue second Credential
Download the full paper to explore the architecture, governance model, technical design, and real use cases behind the Aviation Federation Proof of Concept. You can also explore the open-source code on GitHub and discover how the Zero Trust principle “never trust, always verify” helps ensure digital security in connected aircraft systems.