Consultants in the aerospace industry are backing blockchain technology to drive down the huge cost of plane maintenance.

Blockchain has been described as a single ledger that can record information from several different parties and then allows users to access a single record of information.

"I really see this coming in, in a couple of years," said John Schmidt, head of Aerospace and Defense at Accenture, speaking at the Paris Air Show.

Schmidt uses engine maintenance as an example of how airlines can avoid carrying out wasteful work.

"Through all that life cycle of the engine, the original parts, the replacement parts and configuration are all being tracked, and it is being done by a number of different companies.

"Blockchain is in effect a single federated ledger that everybody who uses and touches that engine could use it as a single point of truth of what has happened to the engine," he explained.

Schmidt said that with blockchain data, engineers who may have never worked on the plane will know precisely the configuration, parts list, and usage data.