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The Middle East continues to generate growth for CFM International’s Leap engines, accounting for almost 400 of the company’s backlog of 10,000-plus units. The pending deliveries in the region have prompted the opening of Sanad’s new maintenance, repair, and overhaul center for the turbofans, which the company inaugurated in Abu Dhabi on Thursday.
The facility became the first Leap support center specifically tasked with supporting operators across a vast territory spanning the Middle East and North Africa, as well as South Asia. It will fulfill services covered by the 11-year shop visit offload agreement signed during the Paris Air Show in June with CFM parent companies GE Aviation and Safran. Abu Dhabi’s sovereign wealth investment group Mubadala owns Sanad.
The MRO center has operated since July and has already completed work on the first Leap engine for Flydubai. It expects to receive more than 450 Leap-1A and -1B units, from operators of the Airbus A320 Neo and Boeing 737 Max narrowbodies, respectively.
CFM recently announced plans to open a new MRO shop in India that will open in 2025 with capacity for around 300 shop visits. In 2024, it plans to open a major new support facility in Belgium.
Nearly 200 Leap-powered airliners now fly in the region. Local operators include the following: Air Arabia, Arkia, Flyadeal, Flydubai, Flynas, Gulf Air, Iraqi Airways, Kuwait Airways, Oman Air, Qatar Airways, SalamAir, and Saudia. For now, that still accounts for less than 10 percent of the 2,900-strong global fleet of aircraft using the turbofans.
In a briefing ahead of the Dubai Airshow, CFM president and CEO Gaël Méheust told reporters the manufacturer aims to deliver 1,600 engines this year, which would amount to a 45 percent increase over its 2022 campaign. This year, the Leap backlog has grown with large orders, such as Air India’s record-breaking order for 800 Leap-1A and -1B engines to power its new narrowbody fleet.
Supporting A321XLR Test Flights
Meanwhile, work continues in support of Airbus's plans to bring the new longer-range A321XLR jet to market. In October, the Leap-1A engines powered the first test flight with passengers on board and they now power two of the three test aircraft. CFM says they will deliver 34,000 of thrust to support the XLR’s 4,700 nm range with up to 220 passengers, without any hardware changes.
CFM’s engineering team has seen progress with several issues relating to the durability of the Leap engines, including lower time-on-wing for operators in the Middle East and North Africa where dust and high temperatures have taken a toll.
According to CFM executive vice president Karl Sheldon, the company has developed new blades and nozzles to achieve improved cooling flow. Those improvements should be available for installation in 2024. The engine already has run 3,700 cycles during endurance tests so far, including the use of special dust and sand rigs to replicate conditions experienced by local operators.
Another improvement has involved a redesign of the housing and the solenoid of the starter air valve to mitigate high vibrations experienced on the fan case of the Leap-1A engine, resulting in flight delays and cancellations. CFM plans to roll out the update for the in-service fleet next year.
CFM is also tackling non-synchronous vibration on the number-three bearing housings of both the -1A and -1B turbofans, resulting in some aerodynamic instability. This too has resulted in a redesign that will become available in the coming months. Sheldon said engineers made the improvements possible with analysis of the high volume of performance data coming from the Leap’s sensor suite.
The company is addressing incidents of carbon buildup, or coking, in the fuel nozzles with improvements to the reverse bleed system, consisting of a series of pipes and a blower on the outside of the engine. It expects the upgrades to counteract the impact of heat from the engine rising to the upper hemisphere of the engine when it is shut down at the end of a day’s operations. The new reverse bleed system will pull the hot air under the cowl to keep the nozzles cooler and prevent the build-up of carbon.
In pursuit of the objective of delivering another 20 percent reduction in carbon emissions for new generation airliners anticipated around 2035, CFM RISE program engineers have accelerated work on the open fan concept, expected to deliver a bypass ratio higher than 50, compared with 12 for the Leap and 10 for the earlier CFM56. GE and Safran are exploring the potential for a hybrid-electric powertrain based on the technology and also the use of hydrogen fuel in place of jet-A or sustainable aviation fuel.