MRO: Pratt & Whitney Canada continues developing its predictive solutions |
| Romain Guillot in Edinburgh |
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18 OCT 2018 | 442 words
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© Le Journal de l'Aviation |
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The engine manufacturer Pratt & Whitney Canada took advantage of the ERA (European Regions Airline Association) AGM which was held in Edinburgh last week to highlight the services that come with its engines and APUs for regional aviation. Remember that along with its American big brother the Canadian engine manufacturer is far and away the world leader in the sector, supplying the ATR family, Bombardier's Q400 and Embraer's E2 E-jets, Mitsubishi's MRJ and the Airbus-Bombardier A220.
Frederic Lefebvre, vice-president Sales & Marketing at Pratt & Whitney Canada for regional airlines, says that the new diagnostic-prognostic solutions based on FAST (Flight Data Acquisition, Storage and Transmission) units are having "a great deal of success". For turboprop planes, FAST has been certified on the ATR-600s and Q400s, with over thirty operators and over 400 planes equipped (another 150 will soon be too). Among the airlines we can mention are Jazz (Air Canada), Porter, Westjet, Ethiopian, Spicejet and Buddha Air.
By reducing operational costs and improving availability, Pratt & Whitney Canada is promising that by simply collecting and analysing engine data FAST can generate savings of between 15 000 and 25 000 dollars per year and per aircraft. "The more customers use this solution the more they want to use it", says a delighted Frederic Lefebvre, who also specifies that the solution is a particularly flexible one, with a host of customisation options possible for reporting. But FAST won't be stopping there as Pratt & Whitney Canada will soon be extending it to the propeller itself (vibration monitoring is already available) with a propeller balancing system announced for the second quarter of 2019.
Frederic Lefebvre is also announcing an improvement in the company's health monitoring tools, with "Oil Analysis Technology" advanced oil checks. This new solution is currently deployed on PW300, PW600 and PT6A programmes and will soon also be extended to the PW100 (ATR) and PW150 (Q400) programmes from next year. He feels that this solution may be compared to "blood analysis in human being", with one hundred times more accuracy than traditional methods. "Here we won't just be detecting an engine degradation fifteen hours before a problem occurs, but 400-500 hours in advance", states Frederic Lefebvre. "This also lets us identify more precisely where the problem is", he specifies.
Finally, Pratt & Whitney Canada's vice-president Sales & Marketing highlighted these service offers such as the FMP (Fleet Management Program), FEP (Fleet Enhancement Program) or the P&WCSMART integrated solutions. For example, these integrated solutions will now be rolled out to the engines which are currently in production. The fleet management solutions achieved good results this year with nearly 350 million dollars in contracts (800 million last year). |
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Romain Guillot
Chief editor
Cofounder of Journal de l'Aviation and Alertavia
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