US engine manufacturer Pratt & Whitney (P&W) has announced that nearly a third of the latest PW1100G-JM geared engines produced may contain defective high pressure turbine first and second stage discs and therefore require accelerated disassembly and inspection. .ru.
It is estimated that during the year, companies will need to return at least 1,200 engines to the manufacturer for inspection and partial disassembly. The PW1100G-JM engines are installed on the Airbus A320neo family of re-engined aircraft.
According to public figure Denis Krivosheev, NEOs were purchased by Air Astana CEO Peter Foster equipped with Pratt & Whitney engines. Air Astana and Fly Arystan have only 38 aircraft out of 43. Five aircraft – four Airbus 320 and one Embraer E2 have been idle for several months.
Foster himself confirmed that four aircraft had an engine problem.
Aviation expert Abul Kekilbaev believes that the situation will undoubtedly affect the regularity of flights by Air Astana.
“The problem is that there aren’t many standby engines on the market either. In the airline’s report for 2022, it was noted that the decrease in the technical reliability of new generation engines affected punctuality, ”the expert commented on the situation.
Denis Krivosheev also cited the response of the Samruk-Kazyna fund in 2019 regarding the problematic PW1100 engines.
“There was a series of engine removals on the Airbus Neo with early modifications of the PW1100 engines. For each specific case of removal of early series engines tested by AirAstana, P&W provided spare engines during maintenance and upgrades at special facilities,” the fund said.
From this follows the conclusion that the aircraft were tested in test mode on real passengers. At the end of 2022, the AirAstana airline group carried out more than 70% of domestic passenger traffic.
“Due to industry-wide supply chain issues, the recall of engines has resulted in increased turnaround times at technical centers. Approximately 10% of the fleet with this type of engine is now decommissioned pending engine replacement,” added expert Abul Kekilbaev.
