This month’s rollout of the first Airbus A320neo fitted with CFM Leap-1A engines marked a major milestone for GE Aviation, which, along with its CFM International partner Snecma, expects to build more than 1,600 CFM engines in all this year. The figure amounts to nearly a third of the 2,800 engines GE and its partners plan to build in 2015, compared with 2,600 units in 2013.
GE reported on Wednesday that the jet engine backlog including CFM engines now totals 15,000, and that the value of its total industrial backlog for equipment and long-term services contracts has grown 25 percent over the past two years, to $135 billion. The U.S.-based group and its partners now expect to deliver 3,000 commercial engines by 2020. Over the next five years the number of commercial jet engines in operation from GE and its partners will increase by about 10,000, according to company estimates.
Much of the engine backlog involves new powerplants under development, including the Leap, whose backlog now stands at more than 8,500 engines. GE and Snecma expect the Leap to enter revenue service in 2016 on the Airbus A320neo. Meanwhile, the new GE9X turbofan, under development for the Boeing 777X, carries a backlog of about 700 engines. If all goes as planned it would enter service at the end of the decade.
By the end of this year, GE and its partner companies expect to see 36,000 commercial jet engines in service, and about 46,000 by 2020.
GE Aviation’s preparation for the increasing production volumes involves expanding its supply chain through new facilities, upgrades of existing plants, new joint ventures and acquisitions. In the past eight years, GE has opened seven new U.S. facilities. Recent infrastructure investments include about $144 million in 2014-2015 at GE Aviation’s world headquarters in Evendale, Ohio, where the company has chosen to locate a new combustion test center and a ceramic matrix composite (CMC) laboratory.
Last year GE opened the first factory in Asheville, North Carolina, to mass produce CMC parts for commercial and military engines. Later this year, the company expects to begin mass producing the interiors of the Leap engine’s fuel nozzle using additive manufacturing technology in Auburn, Alabama. Finally, near Purdue University in Lafayette, Indiana, the company continues construction of a new 300,000-square-foot Leap assembly factory scheduled to become operational next year.