While both Airbus and Boeing are behind their planned schedules in building and delivering airliners, they’re not the airline industry’s biggest headache just now—that honor goes to continuing problems with engines used by many popular airplane models.
‘Powder metal defects’ in certain Pratt & Whitney engines are the biggest issue that’s keeping planes out of service and in some cases limiting service or canceling routes, but there have also been supply chain and reliability issues with Rolls-Royce aircraft engines as well.
The P&W issue, for instance, has led to Air Baltic suspending 19 routes for now and reducing frequency on others. In the U.S., Spirit and JetBlue have both had to ground planes, along with international carriers such as Air New Zealand, ANA, Cathay Pacific and IndiGo. Most of the A320 family use variants of the P&W engine. But it’s not all bad news: Wizz Air, which had expected to have 50 planes at a time grounded next year has revised its estimate to 40, and others are also slightly more optimistic in recent weeks.
Cathay Pacific, which temporarily grounded its 48 A350s, all with Rolls Royce engines in September over engine issues, is currently conducting a new inspection of all its A350s after new reports of engine parts that need replacement.
Image by Lars Nissen from Pixabay
