Pratt & Whitney Advances GTF Engine Improvements

While engine manufacturer Pratt & Whitney (P&W) continues the campaign to improve the reliability of its geared turbofan (GTF) engine series, the problems that airlines are having with their engines are not unusual in a historical context, according to Rick Deurloo, president of Commercial Engines. GTF engines power the Airbus A320neo family, Airbus A220, and Embraer E-Jets E2. 

“When you look at the durability of the V2500 eight years into the program versus the GTF, it's not significantly different,” he said. “The difference is that the ramp was so much higher. In effectively 10 years of delivering engines to our airframe customers, we've already basically met what the V2500 did in its 30-plus years. The difference this time would be that the ramp at the front end of this program was significantly higher than the V2500, but its time on-wing is effectively the same at this point.”

When Deurloo joined P&W—now an RTX company—for an engine like the V2500 to reach 14,000 to 15,000 on-wing was a great achievement. “Now you see airlines flying 40,000 hours,” he said. “It's evolved over time. I think [the GTF] is not unlike the V2500, the challenges we had early in that program. The difference is that demand is so much greater, but ultimately it'll lead to an incredible program for us that will be twice the size of any legacy program.”

Nine airlines have logged more than 46 million flight hours with GTF engines. “We're going to have a program of record that's going to be twice as big as any of our legacy products in our history,” he said. “The amount of opportunity on the GTF is just incredible.” Of all its engine programs, the GTF is “probably the biggest growth vehicle…within the RTX family,” he added.

This year, P&W has announced nearly 1,500 additional GTF orders, bringing its total orders to approximately 13,000.

“What gets talked a lot about is durability,” Deurloo said. In the near-term, P&W is targeting durability upgrades that include a redesigned number-three compartment, a waterjet hole-drilling process for combustor panels, which replaces laser drilling, and new turbine hardware. “It's an amazing amount of benefit we've got flying in India today with Indigo, and we're just seeing really good results on that waterjet,” he said. All these fixes will be delivered with new engines starting in the first half of 2026.

Another change is a software update that runs the engine cooler during climb, and Airbus is issuing a service bulletin to incorporate this change. “It’s going to add more time on wing,” he said. “It’s best used on fresh engines…so you get the most benefit from it.”

The Hot Section Plus program is going through the certification process, he explained. “What effectively that does is it takes 35 unique parts from the Advantage program and brings it back into the base, so it gives you all the durability—roughly 95% of it—that you'll get in the Advantage now.

“If I look at time on-wing from engines delivered between 2016 and 2019, 2020 and 2022, and 2023 and today, you can see that continued progress as we continue to update those configurations,” he said. “The other thing about this configuration is…it takes our existing portfolio of aircraft and engines and effectively puts them into an Advantage-like durability class.”

Advantage received FAA certification in February, and EASA also recently approved the program, which will next be certified at the aircraft level in the first half of 2026.

“Not only does it have the durability, which is a 2X time-on-wing improvement, it also offers some thrust goodness at sea level: 4% thrust flexibility; at altitude, 8% thrust flexibility. It'll be important as we start going into campaigns in China, at some of those high, hot airports, you'll see us take advantage of that. And then lastly, it is completely interchangeable between the GTF engines, so you could have an Advantage and a non-Advantage on the same aircraft. We're feeling incredibly good about it. We'll start delivering our first engines to Airbus in the coming months. There'll be roughly an 18- to 24-month cutover. But by the end of Q427 we'll switch to 100% of these.”