Pratt & Whitney Nears the End of the GTF Saga

Ten years into the seemingly endless technical issues with its “PurePower” Geared Turbofan (GTF), Pratt & Whitney says it is finally ready to put the engine behind it. At the same time, it is turning to a next-generation design built on the technology it once dismissed as its rivals’.

The East Hartford, Connecticut-based engine maker has invested hundreds of millions of dollars in building, expanding, and licensing maintenance, repair, and overhaul (MRO) facilities to address durability problems that have plagued the GTF, primarily on the Airbus A320neo family. Similar issues emerged on the Airbus A220 and Embraer E195-E2, which use a smaller version of the engine. The latest upset was due to production powder contamination at the supplier level. At the peak, around 650 GTF-powered A320neos were grounded.

Recovery is now underway. Scott Kreamer, vice president of the PW1500G engine program that powers the A220, told reporters during an Airbus briefing last month that all affected A220s will return to service by the end of this year, and Embraer said its E2 fleet is back to normal. An A320neo operator told Leeham News and Analysis that the PW1100G engine on the A320 will remain an issue for another two or three years. Rick Deurloo, president of Pratt’s Commercial Engines unit, declined to confirm that timeline during his July 1 briefing.

“What I would say…is that we continue to make incredible progress,” Deurloo said. “Without giving you a time period, I think if you went to our customers, they’d tell you it feels sooner than they were anticipating. I’m not going to put a hard date on it. But, by the end of this year, we’re going to be in a really good position to finally, in 2027 or 2028, kind of get this behind us.”

The MRO expansion spans the U.S., Poland, New Zealand, and elsewhere. Deurloo said GTF MRO capacity is up 300% since 2019 and 26% this year over last, which is driving reductions in aircraft on ground. The upgraded GTF Advantage has been certified by both the FAA and EASA, and first deliveries to Airbus are underway, with entry into service expected by the end of the year. A tech installation with a new hot section upgrade will also be available for current GTFs.

With the current-generation engine stabilizing, Pratt is looking to the next one, and there is no rush. Airbus, Boeing, and the engine makers don’t expect a replacement for the Airbus A320 and Boeing 737 families to enter service until 2038 to 2040.

When Pratt & Whitney and CFM International developed the GTF and Leap engines, respectively, to power today’s single-aisle airliners, they pursued different technologies and each downplayed the other’s. Now each is developing next-generation engines that incorporate the technology it dismissed in the mid-2010s.

Pratt’s engine for the next single-aisle airplane, the GTF Gen 2, is a geared turbofan, but one that will draw on ceramic matrix composites and composite fan blades, both pioneered by GE Aerospace. Ceramic matrix composites were the foundation of the Leap. GE’s composite fan blades were first used on Boeing’s widebody airplanes and were also installed on the Leap.

“We continue to have our research around composite fan blades,” Deurloo said. “I think when we discuss it internally around our next-gen single-aisle, it will include composite fan blades in the middle.” On ceramic matrix composites, he declined to quantify progress after citing about 50% completion a year ago: “I think it’s mature, but there’s still more work we’ve got to go do.”

GE (a 50-50 partner with Safran in CFM) and Rolls-Royce are adopting the gearbox technology Pratt used as the foundation of the GTF. Rolls, which has no single-aisle engine today but wants to return to the sector, is developing its UltraFan geared turbofan engine in two demonstrator sizes: the UltraFan 80, which ran in 2023 at 85,000 pounds of thrust, and the UltraFan 30 in the 30,000- to 45,000-pound thrust class, planned for ground testing in 2028.

CFM, meanwhile, is betting on its RISE open fan, an advance on the experimental open rotor technology of the 1980s. Where the open rotor used counter-rotating unducted fans, RISE has a single unducted fan with non-rotating blades behind it. Composite blades are a key element in mitigating concerns of a blade-out emergency; GE says that over millions of hours of operation of its composite blades on Boeing and Airbus airplanes, there has not been a blade-out. Skepticism about the architecture persists, and GE notes that the RISE technology can be applied to a conventional turbofan as well.

GE claims RISE will deliver around 20% better economics than today’s Leap and GTF; Pratt and Rolls claim 8% to 10%. Deurloo cautioned that the airframe and wing must improve significantly to help deliver those gains.

To enjoy full access to exclusive insights about the commercial aerospace sector, subscribe to Leeham News and Analysis, an AIN Media Group platform.