Story ID: 358NBAA
Honeywell Marks Half-century for TFE731 Engines
By: Mark Huber
Caption: As the company celebrates this landmark, it also tackles supply-chain issues. 
Word Count: 408
Honeywell Aerospace is marking the 50th anniversary of its TFE731 family of turbofan engines this week at NBAA-BACE. The first TFE731 was certified in 1972 and since then 20 models and more than 13,000 units have been produced, logging more than 100 million hours of service on some 30 aircraft applications. 

During its lifespan, Honeywell engineers have continued to make incremental improvements to the engine design. For example, the TFE731-50R engine on the Hawker 800XPR features more than 70 enhancements, including better core and low-pressure spool technologies, a digital electronic engine control (DEEC), and a complete nacelle and thrust-reverser system. These changes resulted in greater versatility, dramatically improved temperature margins, a better lapse rate than the TFE731-5BR offers, and, depending on altitude conditions, up to 8 percent better specific fuel consumption.

Like other OEMs, Honeywell (Booths 2400B and 4100) has faced supply-chain challenges spawned by the pandemic and has taken measures to enhance product support. Its AOG team, based at Phoenix Sky Harbor Airport, sits “side-by-side” with technical-support agents to help customers troubleshoot in real time.

The company’s product-support executives told AIN that supply-chain challenges are “very real” and that the company is taking extraordinary measures to address them. It is dedicating the full attention of 25 leaders at the senior director and vice president levels to Honeywell’s 95 “most challenging suppliers.”

Additionally, the company is investing capital, engineering, and sometimes additional manpower resources in these suppliers and ensuring the Honeywell's demand forecasts reach sub-tier suppliers 18 months ahead of time so they can ramp up to meet that demand. 

Honeywell is also working to identify serviceable material and components on the open market and purchase and refurbish it for its inventories via its Honeywell Aerospace Trading (HAT) teams. The company has hired an additional six HAT team buyers and increased inventories by 20 percent.

Items purchased for inventory include whole engines and APUs that are being placed in rental pools. Making refurbished parts and components available to customers does not necessarily reduce prices, but it does allow the aircraft to be returned to service faster.

Supply-chain challenges have forced Honeywell to reevaluate its engineering, portal strategy, and digital footprint to enable customers to be better able to self-serve and troubleshoot. Thus, the company has posted videos to YouTube for this purpose. Company executives expect the supply chain to largely normalize by year-end, with mechanical components recovering first.