Engine Alliance is confident that the fleet of GP7200-powered A380s will rapidly catch up the aircraft powered by the rival Rolls-Royce Trent 900 and overtake it within three years.
Currently just six of the 20 A380s in service are GP7200-powered, but the Engine Alliance fleet will expand to about 47 units at the end of 2012, "by which time we think the fleet will have overtaken Rolls", said the then Engine Alliance president Jim Moravecek at the Dubai air show.
The General Electric/Pratt & Whitney joint venture holds orders for 96 GP7200-powered A380s from six customers. After Emirates introduced the variant last year, Air France became the second operator in November. Korean Air is due to become the third operator late next year, with Etihad becoming the fourth in late 2012.
Engine Alliance says it has not yet suffered an in-flight shutdown with its launch operator, Emirates, and that the two incidents described by the airline's president, Tim Clark, in Flight International's A380 in-service report (10-16 November issue) involved only power backs. It attributes the events to a sensor problem and oil loss because of a fractured pipe.
Source: Flight International
