Ian Sheppard/LONDONDATA TABLES/Air Transport Intelligence
Demand for aero-engines is being boosted by soaring sales of commercial aircraft - from business jets to airliners. As manufacturers strive to meet demand, they are increasingly resisting pressure from customers to offer new products, preferring to recoup the investments made in the past, when they bowed to competitive pressure and produced variants galore.
Engine manufacturers are increasingly focused on making projects profitable, offsetting previous loss leaders, and avoiding costly overheads while stepping up production to meet demand. It is a situation the military side of the aero-engine business would love to be in, but many of the lean-manufacturing initiatives that are enabling manufacturers to build more quickly and cheaply have equal application to commercial and military engines.
Risky variants
Engine manufacturers face a power struggle each time a new aircraft is mooted. While airframers do not wish to provide an engine choice, they do want the right engine, but if they want to launch a product, they can no longer assume that any engine maker will even agree to produce a new variant, let alone a new engine.
As engine builders become more hard-nosed about launching variants without the prospect of large sales, they risk getting cut off from sales of baseline aircraft because of commonality required by airlines. An example is Boeing's Next Generation 737-600/700/800, on which CFM International again ensconced as sole engine supplier while International Aero Engines can only look on as sales soar. Similarly, even though Rolls-Royce signed an "non-exclusive" deal with Airbus to power the Airbus A340-500/600, its Trent 500 is likely to remain the only engine option.
The Boeing 747-500X/600X cancellation left the General Electric/Pratt & Whitney Engine Alliance floundering, with the GP7000 project spending the almost a year in the doldrums. The Airbus A3XX was the only market left and was deemed not enough to warrant an all-new engine, although today's derivative engines are beginning to stretch a point and a new generation will be required to make large aircraft as economically viable as the makers claim. Relatively low sales of large aircraft make international risk-sharing the way forward. Japan is already involved in various programmes, while the rest of the Asia Pacific represents a growing proportion of the industry.
Source: Flight International
