GE Aerospace returned to take top honors in this year’s Product Support Survey for turbofan engine makers, matching its overall average rating from last year of 8.7. However, Rolls-Royce jumped in the ratings to the second slot just behind GE with an 8.6 rating, and support for its BR700 and AE3007 models moved into a tie at the top for engine-specific overall average.

In the comparison of engine makers, Pratt & Whitney Canada (P&WC) and Williams International tied for the third position this year, each compiling a score of 8.4. The Williams FJ44 fell behind the Rolls turbofan models with a rating of 8.4.

Although Honeywell placed last among the turbofan manufacturers, the Phoenix-based aerospace giant scored 9.1 in turboprops, equaling P&WC for the top score among all engine makers. P&WC also posted a 9.1 rating in turboshaft engines while scoring 8.6 in turboprops.

Along with airframers highlighted in AIN’s August issue and avionics OEMs in September, engine makers continue to contend with supply chain disruptions and a tight labor market. Several have added authorized service centers to accommodate increasing support demand in the business aviation sector as well as headcount to help mitigate delivery delays.

Honeywell, for example, has over the past year dedicated 300 employees to its Supplier Rate Readiness team, which works on dual-sourcing strategies and returning repair capability to its own network. GE Aerospace, meanwhile, increased the size of its “in-region” support team by 10 percent and boosted the number of personnel now dedicated to managing logistics for customers of its OnPoint preferred engine maintenance program. 

GE Aerospace

GE Aerospace matched its high score among turbofan providers from last year, at 8.7, and just edged out Rolls-Royce with a 9.6 rating in engine reliability. Its technical manuals score was another leader of the pack at 9.0, along with the cost-per-hour rating at 8.5. However, GE’s individual engines did not receive enough responses to qualify for inclusion in the engine-specific ratings.

Improvements

GE Aerospace’s product support efforts over the past year all start with OnPoint, a full-service risk-reduction program for owners and operators of engines for business aviation platforms that hinges on what the company calls four essential elements: comprehensive, transparent, transferable, and global.

“Providing the support our customers need means listening to what they want, and that is why, when we created OnPoint, we focused on four key pillars of service,” said Justin Kral, general manager of services and support for business aviation. “These principles allow us to remain focused on our customers’ true needs and their satisfaction.”

To ensure it meets those commitments, GE has focused on three areas for continued improvement: global support growth, spare parts, and prognostics.

To support the global nature of its customers’ needs, GE has expanded its complement of in-region personnel by 10 percent. It expanded its authorized service center network with two new facilities, and its mobile repair capacity has seen an 80 percent increase in annual field services completed.

Calling spare parts availability critical for keeping customers flying, GE has also increased the number of personnel dedicated to managing logistics for its OnPoint customers. Along with establishing strategic global spare parts warehouses, the expansion means faster processing and delivery of spare parts to customers when and where needed.

Working to predict customers’ needs has also helped GE Aerospace’s proactive approach to keeping customers flying. Prognostic analytics developed by GE Aerospace successfully predicted nearly 200 engine maintenance needs on just a single engine type over the past 12 months, allowing for proactive maintenance that avoided operational disruptions.

Rolls-Royce

Rolls-Royce saw its overall rating of 8.6 push toward the top of the survey’s turbofan grouping, thanks largely to a particularly high score of 9.5 in engine reliability. The company also excelled in factory-owned and authorized service centers, each earning scores of 8.8 in those categories. Other highlights included a tie with Williams for the top score in turbofan technical reps with an 8.8 rating. In leading the engine-specific ratings with an 8.6, its BR700 series overall support average jumped three-tenths of a point over last year and the AE3007 marked a significant gain of six-tenths of a point. Rolls-Royce turboshafts did not capture enough responses for the company to be included in that category.

Improvements

Operating a dedicated business aviation support organization, Rolls-Royce added at least five authorized service centers over the past year, bringing the total to more than 80. It also now employs 81 on-wing service technicians who perform some of the more complicated work such as in-situ blending. This is described by company vice president of business aviation services Andy Robinson as akin to laparoscopic surgery on an engine to address damaged blades with a high-speed grinding wheel.

Over the past year, Rolls-Royce introduced around-the-clock spares supply capability, compared with its previous 18-hour coverage. “This is all embedded in our aircraft availability center, which is in Berlin, and that’s a 24/7 facility that coordinates all of the activities around the world,” Robinson told AIN. “And they have two goals. One is to try to achieve 100 percent averted missed trips…it’s virtually impossible to do 100 percent but we are continuously around the 99 percent mark, which is excellent. To achieve that, we have to be able to rescue an aircraft within 24 hours.”

Meanwhile, Rolls-Royce has committed to what Robinson called “a massive investment” in leased engines as part of its CorporateCare Enhanced cost-per-flight-hour service, increasing the pool by about 10 percent to 176 Pearl and BR725 powerplants. Over the past year, Rolls has signed its 1,100th contract for CorporateCare Enhanced, said Robinson, who called the milestone “amazing” given that the company launched the program in 2019. In May, Rolls-Royce introduced CorporateCare Flex, a power-as-a-service program tailored for economical management of mature engines.

Other advances at Rolls-Royce include its establishment of a standalone business aviation digital team, largely tasked with enhancing the company’s engine health monitoring capability.

An engine vibration and health monitoring unit for the Pearl engine allows the team to detect anomalies before they cause problems, explained Robinson. “On the Pearl engines, we can monitor more than 10,000 parameters,” he said. “Because we’re monitoring so many parameters, we can also monitor the speed with which the engine accessories on the outside of the engine respond. Normal engine health monitoring looks at the inside of the engine. But this now concerns whether the fuel metering unit is responding quickly enough, and if it isn’t, then we know it’s starting to become an issue and we can replace it before it actually causes a problem.” 

Pratt & Whitney Canada

Finishing in a tie with Williams International in the turbofan grouping, Pratt & Whitney Canada (P&WC) saw its overall rating improve by a tenth of a point over its showing last year. The company posted second place in turboprops (8.6) and first in turboshaft engines (9.1), a high score across all three engine categories. Standout ratings included a 9.0 for authorized service centers in the turbofan grouping and a 9.5 in overall reliability in turboprops. It also produced the survey’s biggest improvement in overall score from last year, posting a six-tenths of a point advance in the turboshaft bracket. In fact, its PT-6 turboshaft garnered the highest overall rating among the qualifying engine models at 9.2, a 0.7 percent improvement overall. It also led with 9.8 ratings in service centers and a greater than 9.0 rating in all of the engine-specific categories, save for cost of parts.

Improvements

P&WC reports several recent advancements and developments in its product support apparatus, from a contract extension on Camp Systems engine health monitoring (EHM) to a new parts package for PT6T-3 engine reduction gearboxes through its P&WCSmart portfolio to expansion of its own global service and designated maintenance facility networks.

Calling Camp a key collaborator in P&WC’s effort to advance EHM, the companies’ contract extension carries their partnership to 2040 for all of P&WC’s turbofan, turboshaft, and turboprop engines. Camp, which has provided its service to P&WC since 2010, provides EHM data analysis on 25,000 P&WC engines in service.

Along with P&WC’s newly introduced parts package for the PT6T-3 gearboxes, the company’s three new P&WCSmart portfolios now include services for PT6A-34AG engines for aerial agricultural applications. The new services involve a flat-rate overhaul program that offers a guaranteed overhaul price and capped prices for optional compressor and turbine blades, a propeller strike repair program, and a flat-rate engine exchange program.

“With an engine exchange, we provide the customer with a freshly overhauled engine in exchange for their existing core,” explained P&WC v-p of customer service Irene Makris. “The customer pays a fixed price well below the cost of an overhaul. Helping to address our customer’s operational needs and current supply chain issues, engine exchanges eliminate many of the logistics associated with an overhaul. There is no need to rent an engine, there is only one engine removal and installation, and there are no shipping logistics to manage.”

P&WC has also addressed speed of service by relying on third-party suppliers, said Makris, and can often now resolve AOGs in as little as two hours. Meanwhile, the company recently introduced remote maintenance kits that contain certain parts and tools for select helicopter engines.

Recent MRO expansion includes a new line for the PW200 family in Belo Horizonte, Brazil, which complements the facility’s existing PT6A overhaul capability. Opened in 2020, the Belo Horizonte facility also received certification recently to become an official parts distribution center for the company, helping to speed delivery throughout the region.

“We also turned our attention to the burgeoning European market in recent months, announcing in May that in order to support P&WC customers’ MRO capacity for PW500 turbofan engines, MTU Maintenance Berlin-Brandenburg will expand its capability to include PW545C (Cessna Citation XLS+) and PW535E/E1 (Embraer Phenom 300/300E) engine models at the MTU Maintenance facility in Ludwigsfelde, Germany,” noted Makris.

Finally, the company recently announced that it would create a new MRO line for the PT6A in Rzeszow, Poland, making the facility there a center of excellence for customers in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa.

Williams International

Tying for third position in the survey’s turbofan grouping with an 8.4 rating, Williams International saw a two-tenths of a point decline in overall score from its showing last year. Nevertheless, it placed first or second in no fewer than five of the 10 turbofan categories, posting most notably a 9.2 score in warranty fulfillment, an 8.2 in cost-per-hour programs, an 8.8 in AOG response, 8.8 in technical reps, and a 7.2 in cost of parts. However, it tied Honeywell for the lowest scores in factory-owned service centers and stood alone at the bottom of authorized service centers with an 8.2 rating.

Its FJ44-specific support drew an 8.4 overall average, bested only by the Rolls models in the turbofan category, on the strength of a 9.0 in overall engine reliability.

Improvements

Calling its support of a rapidly expanding fleet of 7,600 engines one of its “top priorities,” Williams International recently has focused on upgrades of its authorized service network to help minimize downtime. The company reports that it has upgraded about one-third of these centers to the highest tier and that it is working with its remaining network to help them achieve that status “as quickly as possible.”

“We understand the need to have service centers fully capable to support operators’ maintenance needs,” Williams said. “Consistency of these capabilities within the network assures a seamless experience regardless of which authorized service facility an operator goes to.” Separately, Williams’s TAP Blue program covers the cost of service for enrolled operators at the authorized centers. Along with ensuring that highly trained technicians perform the maintenance, TAP Blue allows for easy budgeting to enable consistent engine support expenses.

Customers have enrolled nearly 90 percent of the worldwide fleet of Williams engines in the TAP Blue program, and new aircraft enrollment exceeds that percentage.

“We are pleased the light and very light aircraft powered by our FJ44 and FJ33 engines continue to prove themselves as extremely effective business tools that allow our customers to make the most of their valuable time—especially when it comes to avoiding unpredictable travel disruptions,” said Williams. “Demand for our engines continues to rise from airframe OEMs, and utilization of our current fleet continues to climb and is at all-time highs.”

Honeywell Aerospace

Honeywell’s mixed results in this year’s survey resulted from a last-place showing among the turbofan makers with a 7.6 score and the best rating of the entire survey with a 9.1 in turboprop support. In the turbofan grouping, the company placed last in cost-per-hour programs and cost of parts while finishing with a 6.7 in parts availability and AOG response of 7.3. However, its turboprop support organization finished with the highest score of the survey in overall reliability with a 9.8 and technical manuals with a 9.5. It also garnered the best scores of the survey with a 9.7 rating in factory-owned service centers and a 9.0 in parts availability. In the individual engine categories, Honeywell improved its TPE331 overall average by seven-tenths of a point to 9.1.

Improvements

Honeywell Aerospace has instituted what v-p of customer and product support Todd Owens called “pretty transformational changes,” creating two teams to address supply chain interruptions. The first, Focused Supplier Development, consists of about 150 executives to actively engage with suppliers, helping them secure raw materials and hire new employees with job fairs, for example, to get product flowing more freely. A second team for Supplier Rate Readiness includes about 300 individuals working on dual-sourcing and returning repair capability to the Honeywell network.

“That team is really focused on helping us become healthy for longer-term sustained growth,” explained Owens. “So that team is looking 14 weeks out through three years. As the business aviation space continues to ramp up and our key customers continue to grow, that team has really helped ensure that our supply base is healthy for the longer term.”

At the same time, the company has helped boost its supplier workforce. Honeywell itself added more than 1,000 employees over the past year. According to Owens, Honeywell has seen its labor force stabilize, as have those of its larger suppliers. “It’s that next layer down, [the smaller] machine shops that are still struggling,” he said. “And that’s where we focused with Honeywell resources, in many cases Honeywell boots on the ground at our supply base to try to make sure we get parts on time.”

V-p of technical support Malcolm Fleming reported improvements to Honeywell’s online customer portal, including a redesign to speed downloading and improve search functionality. “It’s also going to have a much better user experience,” he said. “It’ll have the capability for people to have favorites, create a my-library, or sign up for subscription notifications that are not very easy to do today. One of the elements I’m excited about: we’ll have an online view for integrated electronic technical manuals [IETM].”

So far, the company has created 65 sets of IETM for its business and general aviation engines and APUs.