Huawei and Customers Release AI-Powered Inference Appliance for Airlines

[Shanghai, China, September 17, 2026] In parallel with the main event HUAWEI CONNECT 2026, Huawei hosted the Digital and Intelligent Aviation Session at the Shanghai Expo Center, themed "Empowering Intelligent Transformation for Civil Aviation." The event brought together global civil aviation experts and managers to explore digital and intelligent transformation practices in airports, airlines, and air traffic management. Huawei and its customers also jointly unveiled the AI-Powered Inference Appliance for Airlines.

Surong Shen, COO of Huawei's Smart Transportation BU, highlighted that data is becoming a core production factor in civil aviation, with AI's widespread adoption reshaping the industry. Driven by connectivity and computing, Huawei is committed to building a digital and intelligent foundation for civil aviation together with its partners.

Abdul Mombokaleo, Director General of Tanzania Airports Authority (TAA), outlined their "Digital-First" smart airport transformation strategy. To overcome challenges like data silos and operational inefficiencies, TAA partnered with Huawei to develop a three-phase roadmap: hub-first, radial connectivity to regional airstrips, and ecosystem collaboration. They employed an integrated "device-edge-cloud-application-intelligence" architecture to create an Intelligent Operation Center (IOC), and deployed AI applications like AI turnaround. TAA aims to position Tanzania as a leading aviation hub in Eastern and Southern Africa.

Li Qiang, Deputy General Manager of the Information Management Department at China West Airport Group (CWAG), shared the group's end-to-end digital and intelligent operations. Capitalizing on algorithm enablement, digital twins, and cloud infrastructure, CWAG has developed an intelligent algorithm system and a unified operational dashboard. This delivers consolidated computing power for airport collaboration, supporting the integrated, efficient operations of regional airport clusters.

Wu Zixuan, Senior Manager of Technology Innovation, Digital Committee at Xiamen Airlines, detailed the company's partnership with Huawei to advance the adoption of large models and agentic AI in airlines. Using Ascend computing power, Xiamen Airlines has developed a three-layer large model architecture that boosted NOTAM parsing efficiency by over 50% with nearly 100% accuracy. Safety report processing reached 99% accuracy with a 40% efficiency increase, while aircraft maintenance translation efficiency rose by more than 40%. The agentic AI platform, co-developed with Huawei, enabled the intelligent pre-review of IT project architecture solutions, which streamlined model training, inference, and tuning. This cut end-to-end inference latency by about 49%, enabling AI to transition from executing isolated tasks to large-scale automation.

Wan Peng, Vice President of Beijing Wintelia Technology, noted that the company has partnered with Huawei to launch the aviation data exchange platform DXP. Following the strategy of "building a data hub rather than replacing legacy systems," the platform integrates siloed data across multiple systems to enable intelligent businesses. For example, traditional lost baggage searches rely on fragmented data across multiple systems and simple text descriptions like WorldTracer messages. The data hub, however, supports fast baggage locating through image-based searches.

Julius Hermawan, Vice President of Network Operation at AirNav Indonesia, discussed the company's SD-WAN practices. As Indonesia's sole air navigation service provider, managing 7.789 million square kilometers of airspace and 302 sites, AirNav Indonesia implemented Huawei's secure SD-WAN overlay network for intelligent traffic scheduling. The deployment of the iMaster NCE unified management platform greatly enhanced operational efficiency and supported the rollout of ADS-B ground stations for comprehensive remote airspace monitoring.

Thomas Xu, President of Huawei's Smart Aviation BU, presented the "Aviation Agent" technical architecture designed for Total Airport Management (TAM). Advanced algorithms like the digital apron and proactive operation control enable end-to-end intelligent airport operations, which enhance efficiency, safety, and passenger experience for the aviation industry. So far, Huawei has served over 130 airports and more than 30 airlines across over 40 countries, delivering reliable, long-term operational excellence.

Huawei and its customers jointly release the AI-Powered Inference Appliance for Airlines

At the session, Thomas Xu, together with Xu Genyan, General Manager of the Operations Division of China Aviation Navigation Data (NAVCHINA), and Huang Hao, Deputy General Manager of Xiamen Airlines' Digital Committee, jointly released the AI-Powered Inference Appliance for Airlines. The solution focuses on NOTAM parsing, aircraft maintenance AI translation, and safety report analysis, significantly improving operational efficiency and helping airlines go intelligent.

The growing adoption of digital and intelligent technologies is transforming the civil aviation industry from an experience-driven to a data- and AI-driven model. Moving forward, Huawei will use its leading ICTs and open ecosystems to collaborate with global partners, driving digital and intelligent transformation in civil aviation to create a smarter future with enhanced safety, efficiency, and passenger experience.