Recent studies experienced the use of advanced tools for smart aircraft maintenance and inspection. These tools often require the use of computer-vision based technologies to recognize and track a given aircraft mechanical part in order to make it possible to show additional information to a technician on a suitable display. In this paper we propose a visual recognition module of aircraft mechanical parts that has been included in a prototype system designed for the smart maintenance of the Alenia-Aermacchi M346. The evaluation, carried out on real aircrafts, considers different kind of maintenance operations that require the recognition of 20 different mechanical parts. The visual recognition module has been tested under different imaging conditions and varying the scale and the orientation of the parts of interest. The results confirm the feasibility of our proposal also in such a very challenging and realistic condition. (C) 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.