This year’s Farnborough International Airshow came and went with little fanfare. Many regarded the show as a relatively quiet one in terms of firm commercial aircraft orders. The sustained aircraft production delays impacting capacity and growth opportunities – with cancellations even being noted by OEMs – have contributed to a degree of hesitancy toward committing to new aircraft orders in this more turbulent supply chain environment. Engine orders – however – made strong progress at this year’s show, despite delays.
Avolon’s engine order, valued at approximately $5bn at list price, was the standout news from the airshow. The Dublin-based lessor ordered 160 Pratt & Whitney GTF engines and 150 CFM LEAP-1A engines to power its orderbook of 155 A320neos. The deal also includes options to double its order from both Pratt & Whitney as well as CFM. Avolon has an orderbook of 279 A320neo family aircraft as of
July 23, 2024.
The CFM LEAP-1B engine was selected by Macquarie AirFinance to power its order for 20 737 MAX aircraft. Nordic Aviation Capital booked CFM’s third order of the show for 12 LEAP-1A engines, with options for two more.
GE Aerospace’s GEnx engines were also in high demand at the airshow with Japan Airlines placing an order for 40 GEnx-1B engines to power the 20 787-9 Dreamliner aircraft the airline ordered at the airshow, as well as British Airways commitment to purchase 12 of the engines to power its own order of the same aircraft. Another notable highlight, was the 40 additional GE9X engines ordered by Qatar, as well as spares, in conjunction with its order of 20 777-9 jets that added to its existing order of 40 aircraft. Other orders were received by GE Aerospace came from Turkish Airlines, National Airlines, and EVA Air. GE Aerospace boasted the most diverse customer range.
Pratt & Whitney stole the show with an order for more 600 of its GTF engines. As well as Avolon’s order for 160 GTFs, Cebu Air Pacific selected the GTF engine to power its 152 A321neo order made at Farnborough – an order of 304 GTF engines for Pratt & Whitney. The engine manufacturer said that since the beginning of 2024, it has secured 950 orders for the GTF engine.
Pratt & Whitney is still working through the workscope to inspect and replace parts impacted by the contaminated powder metal issue, which has already led to hundreds of aircraft being grounded as removals and inspections are carried out. Airlines such as JetBlue and Wizz Air highlighted the impact of the engine issues in their second quarter 2024 earnings calls. JetBlue management said that the Pratt & Whitney related aircraft groundings were “significantly impeding our growth rate and pressuring our profitability”.
Spirit Airlines reported an average of 20 AOGs connected to the GTF engine issues during the second quarter. The airline noted it had secured $37.2 million of credits in compensation from Pratt & Whitney – further anticipating a total of around $150-200 million in credits for the full year of 2024.
The scale of the issue is significant but with a workscope in progress and seemingly on target, the problem has done little to discourage customers from continuing to choose the engine type.
Speaking to Airline Economics earlier this year in June, Wizz Air’s CEO and co-founder József Váradi maintained that the GTF engine was a good engine, adding “it’s kind of painful for the short-term, but it’s a good engine over the long run”.
Wizz had 46 AOGs as of June 30, 2024. The company had discussed a spare engine strategy to circumvent the groundings, having secured 14 spare GTF engines in the quarter. The airline anticipates having secured approximately 56 spare engines by the end of this summer.
MTU Aero – the engine manufacturer that partners with Pratt & Whitney on the GTF engine development – said that it has “made a lot of progress” for GTF engine shop visits. In its second quarter earnings call, the company’s CEO Lars Wagner said shop visit turnaround times were falling below 100 days.
The company has three facilities capable of carrying out shop visits for the GTF engine: MTU Maintenance Hannover, EME Aero in Poland, and MTU Maintenance Zhuhai which opened last year.
In addition, MTU Aero noted that AOGs for the second quarter were well below initial expectations of 650. A spokesperson for MTU said: “The expected peak was not as high as originally anticipated due to airlines’ proactive fleet management as well additional spare engine deliveries to the market. The AOG numbers continue to trend downwards.”
The spokesperson for MTU added: “We continue to invest, ramp-up and grow to meet market demand and best support our customers and their needs – for instance through our newly inaugurated and fully-automated turbine disk production hall in Munich, our new repair facility, MTU Maintenance Serbia and our on-going MRO shop construction in
Jinwan, China.”
Rolls-Royce is also making moves to tackle the durability issues of its Trent 1000 and XWB engines. In its second quarter 2024 report, the UK engine manufacturer detailed a £1bn ($1.3bn) investment programme to improve the time-on-wing for its modern engines.
The company reported that the programme was “progressing well” with flight testing about to commence for the Trent 1000 TEN high-pressure compressor turbine (HPT) blade. The company said in its second earning call that the part will “more than double the time-on-wing” for the engine. In addition, design improvements for the Trent 1000 and 7000 engines will “deliver an incremental 25-30% time-on-wing benefit” by the end of next year. Improvements are being made to its XWB-84 engine that will also further improve its fuel burn efficiency.
While these engines have their own unique challenges, the industry as a whole faces supply chain constraints. Speaking to Airline Economics, ITP Aero executive director of commercial business Mikel Lantero said: “The supply chain constraint is probably more caused by the raw materials, which is affecting the whole industry.”
ITP Aero – the Spanish engine and gas turbine manufacturer – was spun out of Rolls-Royce in 2022 and made its first appearance at this year’s Farnborough airshow as an independent company. “It gives us this opportunity to strengthen increased collaboration with other companies,” says Lantero.
“We definitely have our own challenges, but we tend to have a lot of dual sources and a lot of protections with making parts both internally and externally,” he adds. “We have our own foundry, so we have a lot of internal protection from that perspective.”
He said that the company has to strike a balance between dedicating its resources to new aircraft deliveries versus supporting the existing
in-service fleet.
With production rates not quite sustaining the high demand for both aircraft and engines, the industry has a long road ahead as it works to ramp up assembly times. Another challenge that lies ahead for the industry – and in particular engines – is the need to meet approaching ESG targets and mitigating the environmental impact of the industry. At this year’s airshow, new engine technologies to support these aims were a common theme from
the industry.
“We need to do something and the industry knows that,” said Collins Aerospace engineering and technology leader Mauro Atalla on the sidelines of its GTF hybrid-electric propulsion demonstrator conference at the airshow. Parent company RTX announced at the event that the preliminary design review for the demonstrator was complete. The engine is a combination of two Collins megawatt-class electric motor generators within a GTF engine.
While the engine is still in its “infancy stage”, it marks an important step towards more energy efficient engines. The engine is part of RTX’s sustainable water injecting turbofan comprising hybrid-electrics (SWITCH) project supported by the EU clean aviation joint undertaking. The SWITCH engine would offer the potential to reduce fuel burn and emissions for future short- and medium-range aircraft.
RTX says that hybrid-electric propulsion plays an essential role in its technology roadmap for sustainable aviation technologies and the road to net zero. Engineering and technology leader at Collins Aerospace Mauro Atalla said at the event: “Future aircraft are going to be more electric no matter what.”
Atalla added that his team – while not collaborating with airlines on the project – have communicated frequently with airlines to determine what they want from the project. He found that their largest concern were recurring costs, with maintenance expenses in particular of concern for these engine types. Atalla said that as the project progresses these issues would be addressed.
RTX is exploring other developments in sustainable technologies. Pratt & Whitney’s SVP, engineering, Geoff Hunt said: “All of our products are certified to run on a 50% blend. We have run most – if not all – of our engines at one point or another over the last decade 100% sustainable aviation fuels (SAF) both on ground tests and, in some cases, flight
test operations.
“We’re working with the industry to develop the specifications that are going to need to be codified in order for that to be released as a broader capability across the industry and, of course, very reliant on the fuel manufacturers to provide the sort of volumes of SAF to support that.”
RTX was selected by the US Department of Energy (DoE) in 2022 for two research and development projects to test the use of hydrogen in operating the land-based variant of the PW4000 turbofan engine, the Mitsubishi Power Aero’s FT4000. The company will work on a project to test the use of ammonia – a chemical compound of mostly hydrogen and nitrogen – as fuel for power-generating turbines. Ammonia requires much less refrigeration in comparison to hydrogen and can be easily stored
as a liquid.
“If we’re going to use hydrogen, we’re going to be re-architecting engines in a pretty significant manner,” added Hunt.
MTU is advancing sustainability technologies as it develops its flying fuel cell (FFC), which essentially is a fuel cell that converts liquid hydrogen into electrical energy. The electric motor for the technology is being developed by Stanberg-based eMoSys, which the company acquired last year. A spokesperson said that the technology was still “in the developmental stage and product maturity is expected in the
mid-2030s”.
Engines and how to make them more sustainable is a hot topic in the industry today, which cropped up several times throughout the airshow. Rolls-Royce announced a partnership with IT services company Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) to collaborate on hydrogen fuel system technology research. TCS will provide the engineering skills and support to Rolls-Royce as it looks into the key challenges to enable hydrogen for use in aviation.
“Our capacity, capability, and competency help to shorten the design requirements for this hydrogen project,” said TCS’ senior vice president and global head, Internet of Things Regu Ayyaswamy. “We will also learn about new materials, new methodologies, and new technologies that we need to invent or innovate to realise hydrogen
in aviation.”
Ayyaswamy emphasised that such sustainable technologies are still in their early stages. Speaking to Airline Economics, he commented: “Across the industry, everyone is looking at different approaches to aerospace sustainability. There is already a lot of work going on electrification, but a large commercial-grade electrification engine in scale is still a little bit far away. Hydrogen, at least, is holding some level of promise to create a net zero engine. But even in hydrogen, we still have some way to go.”
He added that hydrogen transportation, its storage as well as the infrastructure needed at airports is “a bigger challenge than making an engine” for hydrogen fuels.
Ayyaswamy said that its IT technologies could provide support for engine maintenance and durability. “Technology can play a vital backbone role to the value chain. It can support sustainability, but also the fast and real-time information flow can accelerate the technical manufacturing itself. If you look at supply chain issues, they can all be addressed through better adoption
of technology.”
Such technologies include the ‘digital twin’ concept. Digital twins are a virtual and accurate representation of physical objects. Using reliable data streams, they can simulate products and their outcome, allowing for more optimised decision-making. Ayyaswamy and the company see the potential of such technologies
for engines.
“These digital twins essentially take the data and are able to detect if there are any faults in the system,” said Ayyaswamy. It could even predict an “impending issue”. He added: “It is able to use the information and its algorithm, artificial intelligence models, as well as many sources of data to base its prediction.”
These technologies will no doubt help create a more reliable environment for engines. Similar to aircraft, demand is plentiful, but present challenges are limiting supply. The growing pressure to combat emissions adds an additional layer of challenge.
Aircraft – and their powerplants – remain in high demand across all regions and the swelling desire for travel is unlikely to diminish anytime soon. As engine technologies advance and production ramps up, the aviation industry will gain greater leverage over the challenges facing these propellers of the industry.