Industry A320Neo with P&W engines grounded

Last week, India’s low cost carrier IndiGo has grounded three of its 32 Airbus A320Neo due to engine problems. This move follows a directive from the European Aviation safety regulator (EASA).

In a statement published by Pratt & Whitney, the engine manufacturer explained the problems:

“Pratt & Whitney implemented an engineering change in mid-2017 that was intended to improve the durability of the knife edge seal for this engine.  Engines that incorporated this engineering change entered revenue service on customer aircraft beginning in December 2017.  In late January and early February of this year, four of these modified engines did not perform as anticipated.”

The technical problem was explained as a knife edge seal on the High Pressure Compressor (HPC) aft hub on a limited subpopulation of the PW1100G-JM engine.

Airbus has confirmed that the EASA has published an Emergency Airworthiness Directive. According to the statement, airlines are not allowed to continue operations of the affected Airbus A320Neo if both engines are affected. If only one of the two engines is affected, the jets are not allowed to operate ETOPS-flights.

According to Pratt & Whitney, the current population of impacted engines is 43 engines installed on 32 aircraft, of which 21 aircraft have one engine with the modified configuration, and 11 aircraft have two engines with that configuration. Airbus has not published airlines which are affected by the problems. Until now, 113 Airbus A320Neo with Pratt & Whitney engines have been delivered to 18 customers. This means that around 38% of the fleet is affected by the new problems and around 10% of the fleet is grounded. There are also approximately 55 such engines delivered to the Airbus final assembly line awaiting installation on customer aircraft.