Frequently asked questions

Asterias is a platform that holds one record for every aircraft and its major components, with its leases, policies, losses and recoveries attached. Information is captured once, by the organisation doing the work, and made available by permission to the other parties who need it, so no one has to re-enter what already exists. Because that information is structured from the point it is captured, it can be used for analytics, automation and AI.

Information remains owned and controlled by the organisation that created it. Access follows the agreements between the parties and changes as those relationships change.

When one organisation does work that another needs, the result usually travels as a summary, an email or a document. Each party that needs it then enters its own version, and when something changes, the update has to be passed on and re-entered wherever a copy exists. The same happens inside a single organisation, where different teams each hold their own version of the same information.

Information reconstructed in this way after the event is expensive to produce, hard to estimate and hard to trust: each version depends on how the original was interpreted, and the effort is repeated by every party that needs it. Asterias captures information once, at the source, so that every party works from the same information rather than from its own interpretation of it.

Structured data is information held in defined fields, such as a serial number, a cover period, an agreed value or the status of a loss, rather than in free text or a document. Each piece of information has a clear meaning and a clear place, and is connected to the aircraft, policy or loss it relates to.

This is what makes information useful beyond the moment it is entered. Analytics needs data that can be counted, compared and tracked across aircraft, operators and time. Automation needs data that is complete, current and clear enough to act on. AI needs data that is consistent and carries its context, because it can only be as reliable as the information it is given. Information held in documents, emails or free text has to be interpreted first, and each interpretation adds cost and uncertainty.

Asterias structures information at the point it is created, by the people doing the work, so it is ready to use from the start. Where information arrives in a document, it is captured once and connected to the record, so it becomes structured information too. Because everything is recorded against the aircraft or component it relates to, information from different parties, such as utilisation, maintenance, cover and losses, can be used together by those entitled to see it.

Each party works from information captured once at source, rather than a version re-entered from someone else's. That means fewer duplicate records to reconcile, updates that reach everyone who needs them, and automation that runs on structured data. Each organisation keeps ownership of what it contributes.

Information is captured at the source, by the people doing the work, and made available in a consistent structure to every party with a reason to use it. Where information arrives in a document, it is captured once and connected to the record, rather than read and re-entered separately by each party.

Everything is recorded against the aircraft or component it relates to. Leases, policies, losses and recoveries stay connected to the same asset record, so their history is not lost or rebuilt when parties change.

Each party's information remains proprietary to it. Asterias provides access to that information without the record moving: it stays where it was created, and access reflects the rights each party already holds under its own agreements.

Information remains owned and controlled by the organisation that created it. Access for other parties is based on the rights they hold under their own agreements, such as a policy, a lease or a service contract, and is administered by Asterias within the platform.

Once information has been shared with another party, that party's use of it is governed by the rights it holds under its contract. Asterias does not change contractual rights to information. Commercial terms and other sensitive information are visible only to parties with the appropriate rights, and ownership, changes and access can be clearly evidenced.

The record stays where it is. When a relationship changes, permissions are updated to reflect it: the new party is given access in line with its agreement, and the previous party's future access is withdrawn. The underlying asset, policy and loss history does not have to be recreated or moved.

When a relationship ends, the record of activity during that relationship is retained.

Both, depending on where the information starts. Assessments, utilisation, maintenance and cover terms can be entered directly by the people responsible for them. Certificates, invoices and reports remain the authoritative record where they need to be. Asterias keeps those documents connected to the relevant record and makes their information available in structured form once it has been reviewed and captured.

The result is that information from a document is captured once and used across the relationship, rather than each party searching for, interpreting and re-entering the same document independently.

Asterias starts from the loss. A loss is the underlying event and its cost: what happened to the asset and what it takes to put right. Every loss is recorded against the aircraft or component affected, whether or not it is insured.

Where a loss is insured, the claim is recorded as part of it, since a claim is derived from the loss and made under a policy. Where a loss can be recovered from a third party, through insurance or by other means, that recovery is recorded too.

This gives a single history for each loss: what happened, what it cost and what has been recovered. It also gives a policyholder the full picture of losses affecting the fleet, not only those that became insurance claims.

Accuracy starts at the source. Information is entered directly by the people doing the work, whether an operator, an insurer or a service provider, so it is not summarised and re-entered by someone else. When it changes, it is updated once, and the change is visible to every authorised user rather than being corrected across separate copies.

Work such as assessments is recorded with its authorship, status, approvals and versions as it develops, so ownership, changes and access can be clearly evidenced.

No. An organisation subscribes, and the other parties it works with, such as insurers, brokers, lessors and service providers, can be given access to the information relevant to them within its workspace. The scope of that access is set by the agreements between the parties and by the platform's access arrangements for parties that have not subscribed.

A party that wants its own workspace, for example to work across several relationships, can subscribe in its own right.

Yes. Asterias can be used on its own, alongside the systems an organisation already has, without replacing them. Where an organisation wants its own systems to use the information, Connections lets those systems retrieve relevant data from Asterias and receive notifications when agreed information changes.

Asterias is certified to ISO/IEC 27001 and applies information-security controls to how data is stored, accessed and changed. Data is encrypted in transit and at rest, access is controlled by role, and personal data is hosted and processed in the UK and EEA.

Asterias operates under UK GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018. For information held on the platform, our clients are the data controllers and Asterias acts only as their processor. Our Privacy Policy sets out how personal data is handled.