Aerospace Industry Embraces AI: 70% of Companies Pursuing Advanced Air Mobility Initiatives
Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) Future-Ready Skies Study 2025 captures the aerospace sector at a pivotal moment. This report, based on a survey of 323 senior aerospace industry leaders across North America and Europe, reveals an industry in transition.
According to TCS, traditional manufacturing norms are being reimagined as supply chains are reconfigured for resilience and maintenance operations transition from cost centers to strategic value drivers.
The report’s findings indicate aerospace manufacturers anticipate that, within the next five to seven years, 40% of aerospace production will run as dark factory operations, powered by intelligent robotics, analytics and AI. To achieve this, 70% of advanced air mobility companies are already pursuing commercial initiatives, accelerating the transformation of infrastructure, scale and business models.
While lights-out operations in aerospace are still years away, maintenance, repair and overhaul (MRO) providers surveyed for the study largely agreed with aerospace manufacturers on the subject of general autonomy. When asked about the expected level of autonomy in MRO by the end of the decade, few MRO providers surveyed expect fully autonomous MRO workflows for routine tasks, yet around a third envision semi-autonomous repair workflows.
TCS noted that 64% of MRO providers expect measurable ROI from predictive analytics and AI-driven maintenance within five years, demonstrating how intelligence is redefining manufacturing performance economics.
Yet this momentum in the aerospace industry coexists with fragility, according to TCS, as only 28% of executives say they could pivot sourcing within 30 days of a Tier-1 disruption, illustrating the need for supply chains that are intelligent, resilient and perpetually adaptive.
Anupam Singhal, president of manufacturing at Tata Consultancy Services said the study’s findings indicate we are seeing a “rearchitecting of the industry, where decision intelligence, AI-driven operations and human expertise are deeply intertwined.”
