Pratt & Whitney’s PW1000G engines are two years into the inspection program looking for parts containing powder metal. Listen in as editors Lee Ann Shay, Sean Broderick and James Pozzi discuss the status of engine workshops and material availability.

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Lee Ann Shay:
Welcome to the MRO Podcast. In this episode, we're going to be talking about the status of Pratt & Whitney's PW1000G program. As we reported over the last few years, this engine has required parts inspections to look for contaminated powdered metal. Because of these inspections, lately about 30% of the fleet has been on the ground for at least 30 days, according to Aviation Week's Fleet Discovery database. I'm Lee Ann Shay, Aviation Week's executive editor for MRO and Business Aviation, and I'm joined by colleagues James Pozzi, MRO editor for Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, and Sean Broderick, senior air transport and safety editor. James and Sean, welcome.

Sean, let's start with you. What's the status of the engine inspection program?

Sean Broderick:
Well, I think Pratt would tell you that everything is going according to the fleet management plan that was laid out in the summer of 2023. And so what that means is there are a lot of airplanes on the ground, and there are a lot of engines going through some very time-consuming inspections and, in many cases, at least partial, if not full, overhauls.

Pratt's forecast back when this all began was that in 2024, 2025, and 2026, there would be an average of 300 to 350 airplanes on the ground on any given day affected by these inspections. These inspections are required because of contaminated powdered metal that was introduced into a handful of different part types. I think there were nine total or something like that, but they include some critical parts on basically every geared turbofan made within about a five- or six-year period that ended in 2021.

Getting the airplanes in, getting the engines in, getting them through the inspections that are required, and then getting them back out is a very time-consuming process for reasons we'll probably get into a little bit later. But this is going to go on until the end of 2026.

Now, the number that they give—you talked about Fleet Discovery's numbers, and I have those specifically. What Fleet Discovery doesn't tell us is why an airplane is on the ground. So, on any given day, there are going to be airplanes on the ground for all sorts of reasons, or airplanes parked for longer than 30 days and, in some cases, in storage. So not all of these airplanes are on the ground because of the powdered metal inspections.

But right now, a little more than 30% of the entire geared turbofan fleet is on the ground, and 35% of the A320neo fleet powered by geared turbofans is on the ground. For the whole fleet, that's 7,075 airplanes.

Now, again, not all those are powder metal inspection-related, but it's a good bet that more than half of them are. And we still have airplanes going through inspections to correct or address durability issues that predate the knowledge—at least the public knowledge—of the powdered metal issue.

There was one airline executive who told me that they're having engines that are taking 300 days to repair that aren't even affected by this powdered metal issue, which is eye-opening. There's that kind of pressure still on the system that has nothing to do with the powdered metal.

So where are we? We're in the middle of all this. We've still got at least another year, and that's only to address the most critical engines that had to come in out of schedule. These inspections will go on after 2026, and it's an issue that some customers will have to deal with for a few more years. So we're kind of in the midst of it, I guess you could say—maybe halfway through or so.

Lee Ann Shay:
So, Sean, thanks for that. And I stand corrected, I guess, from the 30% of the fleet figure that I had used before then.

Sean Broderick:
That's about right. No, the 30% for the whole fleet is about correct. But again, the key thing is that's the aggregate. Those aren't all powdered metal-related, but a good chunk of them are. Pratt won't tell us—they say their plan's going according to plan. So they're not big on confirming numbers and some other things.

Lee Ann Shay:
Again—

Sean Broderick:
We'll get into—go ahead.

Lee Ann Shay:
We like to be optimistic. But, looking into your crystal ball, Sean, at the end of 2026, where do you think the program will be?

Sean Broderick:
I'll be surprised if there are only 300 to 350 airplanes on the ground. I mean, one of the big issues here that we've been—at least I have been—unable to get satisfactory answers on is when these engines come in and the parts that are flagged in the fleet management and inspection program are inspected, most of them—over 98% or 99%—are passing the inspections, meaning they don't need to be removed immediately. But their life limits are still reduced.

So what happens is, if Pratt doesn't have a full-life part to put into that engine and take the powdered metal part out, that engine goes back in, and it doesn't stay on wing for an entire normal heavy overhaul cycle. It still has to come back in based on whatever life limit is still driving that engine.

They prioritize getting the full-life parts to the production line. And they've done that. It was the beginning of last year, I believe, when they started to roll engines off the line with all full-life parts. But they haven't been very transparent about how long it's going to take them to ramp up production to meet the replacement demand of the parts that are still flying.

And that's one issue. Some of these A320neos, according to our track utilization tool in Fleet Discovery, have less than a year before they have to come back in based on the new life limits for some of the discs that are affected. So you're having engines that have already been in that are going to be coming back in within the next year or so.

If you get those engines out and they don't have to come back in, I think it frees up the queue a lot. It would free it up a lot smoother, more quickly, and get engines moving through.

Material availability is one of the biggest hurdles in getting engines moving faster through the shops. And it's not just the powdered metal parts. When you bring an engine in and you're going to do an overhaul, it doesn't make sense to look at just the parts that are affected by the powdered metal. Pratt wants to work with the operator and say, "Okay, look, we really ought to do this much of an overhaul on this engine—heavier work scope or lighter work scope." But if it's a heavier work scope because it makes sense to maximize the amount of time the airplane can go back out, you’ve got to have that material available too.

And again, none of this was expected. They didn't expect to need any of this. Now, because of these inspections, everything is accelerated.

So all that's a long way of saying that it's not just about getting through that first wave of inspections and getting each engine in once. It's about getting enough material out and into the shops. Pratt has not been—we have asked, and they have not been very transparent about when this is going to happen.

So once that happens—once they have enough full-life powdered metal parts that they're able to replace all the ones that need replacing—I think this is going to go a lot better. But there's no indication that that's going to happen by the end of 2026. And if it does, I'll happily call Pratt executives and write a story about it. But right now, I still think we're going to see lots of airplanes on the ground at the end of 2026, and we're going to be talking about this in 2027 and beyond—just hopefully not in the kind of numbers or scale we're talking about now.

Lee Ann Shay:
Absolutely. And it's a tricky issue for operators. They just want fleet availability, and all the OEMs had this big ramp-up. The fact that there are only so many parts, and they have to go—some to the new production engine, some to the aftermarket—makes it hard. Well, speaking of the aftermarket, James, some aftermarket facilities have recently added some GTF capabilities. What's the latest?

James Pozzi:
Well, yeah, obviously what Sean was saying has no doubt hurt the program in many ways. But of course, I think the last year—specifically 2025—has been a pretty major one for the aftermarket network expansion. Despite all these problems, the MRO market for the GTF engine fleet is maturing slightly and scaling up. There are more engines in service despite the issues with the groundings and those fixes. This obviously increases maintenance demand, and capacity is needed to meet this because there are some high numbers projected by the OEM and, of course, by our own Aviation Week data.

Pratt & Whitney projects that at the moment, there are more than 10,000 GTF engine orders and commitments from more than 90 customers. So, yeah, this goes to show a bit of the scale of the MRO demand that is going to come over the next several decades.

So, let's look at what has happened this year in that sense. It's worth mentioning that the GTF network is a closed network, unlike the rival LEAP network, which is an open network. That brings about its own kind of advantages and, I guess, challenges. One of the challenges is that you've got more exposure to part shortages if there's a supply issue from the OEM side—lack of materials and whatever else we've heard a lot about and talked a lot about on this podcast over the last few years.

But, yeah, the aftermarket network is growing very much on a global scale. In the Middle East, Sanad, of course, one of the big engine players in that region in Abu Dhabi, is going to come online for the GTF. They announced that early this year. They're kind of a multi-capability shop. Of course, they've got Rolls-Royce engines, LEAP engines, and are now going into GTF. This is pretty major, and that's 350 shop visits a year. That will be online from 2028.

That was one of the major things this year. And, of course, they joined recent additions over the last few years. For example, there was OGMA in Portugal, SR Technics in Zurich, Switzerland—they came online with the LEAP shop last year, which I went to visit. Then, in Asia-Pacific, Eagle Services Asia in Singapore and Pratt's own internal facilities, for example, in Florida (West Palm Beach) and their Christchurch Engine Center all the way out in New Zealand too. So, they've really made those additions to the network, and I think their number is just more than 20 now.

Certainly, speaking to people from Pratt in the last few months at various shows and panels, they're kind of full speed ahead with that. I think there will be more additions to come, particularly maybe in the component side. It seems like there's an opportunity there to add more capability for specialist parts repairs.

ITP, of course, based in Bilbao, Spain—the ex-Rolls-Royce business that was spun off several years ago—certainly has that on their radar. They're entering the PW1500G market and the PW1900G market, and they're going to grow their parts repair capabilities. They've added two new additions in the last month or so. Obviously, a company like that has a lot of specialization anyway—very technical and with a lot of engineering expertise given the programs they've worked on, both as an MRO and a risk revenue-sharing partner on some engine programs. So, they will have that expertise to build up, and they'll certainly grow from that.

But, yeah, the scale is just ramping up at the moment. Everyone is going full speed ahead with that.

And then, of course, there's a deal with MTU Aero Engines, the German MRO and one of the world's biggest engine MROs. They're really growing across all their network shops, including EME Aero in Poland, their joint venture with Lufthansa Technik. That's going to produce more than 450 shop visits per year when fully operational in 2026. They've obviously got a second test cell that they opened this year, and they're really ramping up the GTF too.

Then you have Delta TechOps. They're growing their capacity in Atlanta to accommodate GTF work and in Singapore as well. Back to the component repair capability—there's an expansion at the Singapore shop, and they're targeting, I think, 235 components by this year. But that will grow further, I think, in the next few years.

So, yeah, there's opportunity there in the component MRO side. Although, as I said, it's been a significant year for Pratt & Whitney in terms of aftermarket network growth, I think there's going to be more next year, the year after, and the year after that just to accommodate all these engines that are coming online.

These fixes have dominated a lot of the reporting, and there have been, as I said, massive challenges and very problematic issues for the company. But I think once those are implemented and we see the results of those—and I guess a few of those aircraft and their engines are grounded—they'll obviously need that shop capacity online to service a lot of those engines, which were traditionally sold as having longer maintenance cycles. But they will obviously require maintenance, whether it's overhauls or fixed shop visits over certain periods of the engine's lifecycle.

They need to have the shops online to do that. And, of course, the people—that's another challenge, which could be a whole other podcast. Getting that technical talent to support those ramp-ups is also very critical and something Pratt & Whitney, like every other engine OEM, is very wary of. They're trying to address that in many ways, as we've spoken about before.

Lee Ann Shay:
Well, James and Sean, it sounds like based on everything you've said, we're going to be having a podcast about this in 2026. So, gentlemen, thank you for your insights. That's a wrap for this MRO Podcast. Don't miss the next episode by subscribing to the MRO Podcast wherever you listen to them. And one last request: If you are listening on Apple Podcasts, please consider leaving us a star rating or writing a review. Thank you so much.

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