Reminiscing & Rantings

Reminiscing: The aviation industry has sure changed over time: Back in the very old days, Juan Trippe, Howard Hughes, Bob Six and Cyrus Smith would visit with Boeing, Lockheed and Douglas and decide what sort of airplane they needed for their route structure.  They would tinker with the design, Howard Hughes more than most, and eventually a new airplane would appear.

Long before Airbus we had elegant liners like the Lockheed Constellation and Bristol Brittania. Then the jet age with the glorious Convair 880 and 990 - both faster than the B707 and DC-8 (though admittedly narrower - only 5 abreast. Later came the early wide bodies of the L-1011 (a magnificent advanced airplane with, among other things, Autoland!
With the start of the jet age most aircraft were powered by Pratt & Whitney's Dependable Engines, the Boeing 707*, 727,737 and B747-100's and the Douglas DC-8 and DC-9 and most of the MD-80 Series.
* some early variants had Rolls Royce Conways. 

With the advent of wide bodies came engine choice. The DC-10 had GE and PW options, the B747-200's/300/400's had a choice of RR, PW and GE. Ditto the B767.

The trend lately has been to go to single source engine providers such as the B737 classic and NG with only a CFM offering. Its competitor the A320 was offered with a CFM and IAE option and lately the neo with a PW and CFM option.

Rantings: At a recent IATA meeting it emerged that airlines and leasing companies want more choice in engines in the belief that this will bring maintenance costs down. Airlines and lessors are complaining that, with single source engines, the OEM provided maintenance contracts increase the cost of maintenance.

It’s odd because airlines should actually prefer their aircraft to have a single source engine provider. The savings on line maintenance and training should offset any perceived high cost of OEM provided maintenance care.

From the lessors’ perspective, their business is driven by residual values and they are way better off having a vanilla aircraft with as much airframe and engine commonality as possible. Just ask lessors how they fared with A320s powered with CFM56-5B DAC engines!

Engines are the most complicated part of an airplane. Yet airlines and lessors seem to think that maybe they should be given a choice of engine for every aircraft type, with upgrades every five years producing an additional 5-10% fuel burn improvement.

Its simply unrealistic.

As for PMA parts: There were, at this IATA meeting, additional rantings about not being able to use these non OEM parts to drive down maintenance costs.

Well, hello, it’s supposed to be about SAFETY not PROFITS!! If an airline or a lessor uses PMA parts and the engine blows up, good luck getting the OEM to stand behind a warranty that most likely will have been voided.

Maybe it’s time for the OEMS to take a leaf from the metaphorical book of the auto industry who essentially still use the same engine block they designed 50 years ago. In time they were improved by casting them in aluminum instead of iron. When the engines needed more power turbo chargers were added: To give the car more range they made the car body lighter.

The engine OEMs should take a stand and get the air-framers to improve their product - the airframe should be built around the engine rather than the other way around!