Problems with Pratt & Whitney's geared turbofan engine, used by most recent-production Airbus A320-family airliners, have grounded almost a third of the fleet.
Around three in every 10 jets powered by Pratt & Whitney’s PW1000G family of turbofans are now sidelined worldwide.
That is according to analysis of Cirium data, which reflects, though not perfectly, the extent to which airlines from all corners of the globe are finding their operations disrupted by P&W’s recall of its geared turbofan (GTF) engines.
P&W has said the number of jets parked due to the need for inspections and replacement engine parts will peak right about now, in the first half of 2024. The issue involves defects in metallic components introduced during a manufacturing process due to the use of contaminated powdered metal.
. . .
Carriers have made no secret about the scale of the problem. Several have said that one-quarter or more of their GTF-engined aircraft have been sidelined, causing financial pressure and prompting then to curtail expansion plans, revamp operations and seek replacement jets in an incredibly tight market. Airlines are also negotiating multi-million-dollar compensation packages with P&W.
“The problem of our aircraft being unproductive is the fact [that] we are paying twice. We have aircraft investments unproductive on the ground, and we have to rent, wet-lease [aircraft from] another company to produce the capacity in the market,” Swiss chief executive Dieter Vranckx said during a 4 April event in Washington DC.
. . .
On 29 March, Spirit said P&W had agreed to compensate it to the tune of $150-200 million, warning the issue will force it to remove “nearly all” its A320neo-family jets from service at some point. That package equates to P&W paying Spirit about $18,000 daily per grounded aircraft, financial firm Jefferies said in a 1 April report.
There's more at the link.
I wonder how much this is costing Pratt & Whitney overall, in terms of the repairs (which take 250-300 days per engine, according to the article, and must cost millions in themselves) plus the compensation they're having to pay airlines? Does their insurance cover this, or do they have to cover it out of their own resources? If the latter, can they afford to both pay the compensation, and stay in business? I imagine their Chief Financial Officer and his deputies are enduring sleepless nights trying to figure that out . . .
Peter
16 comments:
Apparently a JetBlue a321neo lost an engine of the same model that's caused the groundings and was diverted to Shannon seventy five minutes into a westward transatlantic flight. The story is on the linked site. TOPS allows twin engine commercial jets to fly as far as five hours and forty minutes (iirc) from an airport. They would not be relaxed hours in the cockpit.
If memory serves me the MD-80 & 88's were powered by Pratt & Whitney turbofans and they had a problem of coming apart mid-flight. They corrected the problem with a mandatory service every time the engine was shut down. A competent engine mechanic could complete this service in just under an hour.
And the bean counter(s) who drove the change to a cheaper supplier will walk away whistling. No consequences for such a huge compromise in quality.
I will also bet the first few lots of material from that vendor were just fine so Pratt quit doing 100% acceptance testing, again to 'control expenses'....
MBA schools delenda est... No good manufacturing or engineering management decision comes from a bean counter...
Would this be related to counterfeit parts that I read about?
I worked a short contract at Pratt around 2007, and I was actually relieved to be let go when that facility decided not to pay the contract engineering firms to "save money".
They had a unique way of running their 3D modeling software, unlike any other company that I ever worked for, and it was not a good way. I'm not surprised they've had a lot of problems; I am surprised that more planes aren't falling out of the skies.
I hear from the grapevine that most of the problems that are being attributed to Boeing are actually the ground support crews. Mechanics who still look for left-handed screwdrivers, if you get my drift. DEI strikes again.
Between tsa and this I’m going to stand behind my no fly rule. I’d I go to Hawaii again it will be by boat.
Notice the complete lack of mention in the article of just precisely where these engines were manufactured, and where the contaminated metal came from.
I know a guy who was sent by his small engine company to China twice to try to address their quality control problems. The Chinese saw no problems. There were contracted to produce so many engines. They didn't care one tiny bit whether the engines worked or not.
Cheap, flimsy metal is called "Chinesium" for a reason.
Pratt and Whitney now owned by Raytheon.
And the powdered metal had iron contamination and was made in their own facility.
Paywalled, but first paragraph confirms:
https://airinsight.com/powder-metal-issue-keeps-pw-busy-well-into-2026/
I'm disappointed that all the focus has been on Boeing recently; to me it looks like a concerted effort to smear then.
Airbus has its own problems and much of what is being blamed on Boeing is the fault of others as mentioned above.
I'd love to reduce how much I fly, but my current location pretty much requires it...
Jonathan
Boeing is another GE Alumni success. The move if the hq from Seattle to Chicago is indicative of the culture transition from an airplane maker quality focused to mcd stock price by cost reduction focus. And quality has suffered. One of its own customers produced a video on quality issues.
If even a tiny bit of this article is true…
https://archive.is/kgA8i
The airline and power plant makers are simply reflecting the changes imposed by the talent at the very top. They cut corners, trimmed margins and outsourced a lot of formerly inhouse engineering and the breakdown of quality control was forecasted by literally every engineer involved. What they did was almost like what the weapons makers and shipyards did starting in the 90s. They just gutted quality control and ended merit promotions across the board.
I watched that hour long film about a british 747 going into full refit after 7 years and you saw the quality of the men and the materials and the tools. It sure as hell isn't like that anymore.
It's like with education. The transition from the old, small, one-room schoolhouses initially looked fine, kids learned about the same material in the big, centralized schools. Why? Because the teachers were the same, and they trained the next generation of teachers. But finally all those old teachers were gone.
With manufacturing, it was fine at first to move operations to third world countries. We had plenty of experienced engineers and mechanics to train them and troubleshoot. Now those old hands are gone. Quality ain't coming back.
Oh my. Gear shavings in the gear box was one of the things that we feared in our power plant 35,000 hp pumps. First came the vibration exceeding 3/1000nds of an inch. Then came the thrust and radial bearing failures. On the coast down, the steam turbine and pump would be shedding blades, and not in a good way. If it happened in July, it would be all hands on deck. Our coal units had complete spare parts sets already mounted and ready to be installed. We had an argument with the cost and I got to run the simulation and send them the report. The $3 million turbine / pump set was way way way cheaper than the six month lead time to get a replacement set.
BTW, this is what happens when you let accountants run engineering companies. All of the big engineering companies are on third or fourth generation of management. And the Board of Directors always puts the bean counters in charge at that point because the BOD is all retired bean counters at that point too.
"True Stories From A Former Car Dealer #15: Ignition Switches" Written By: Jerry Reynolds
https://www.carpro.com/true-stories/true-stories-from-a-former-car-dealer-15-ignition-switches
"For the quality summit, we decided to look at Ford Focus ignition switches. It was a major problem for customers of this new car and a real headache for the dealers. Focus owners would put their key in the ignition switch, but it would not come out. That meant owners of Focus had to leave the key in their car making it susceptible to theft or call their Ford dealer."
"The next question was from me. I wanted to know when the new switches started being used. The answer I got left me speechless for a moment. We were told there were "5000 of the old switches left, and as soon as those ran out, they would switch to the new ones."
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