Raytheon paid special attention to Pratt & Whitney's PW1000G programme in its assessment of United Technologies' (UTC) activities for the planned merger between the two US groups.
The geared turbofan (GTF) programme represented "our biggest question mark" in the evaluation of UTC's business, said Raytheon finance chief Anthony O’Brien during an investor call on 10 June.
"We did have a lot questions on the GTF," he says.
However, O'Brien asserts UTC was "very transparent" with its information about the group's financial standing and risks, and that Raytheon is "very comfortable" with the situation.
Noting that "the majority of the [GTF's] upfront investment, relatively speaking, is in the past," he says: "The performance metrics that we have seen, the aftermarket situation and… structure there over the expected life of the programme got us very comfortable as to how that fit into the overall evaluation."
UTC chief executive Gregory Hayes thinks: "We did a better job explaining the GTF investment and returns to Raytheon than we have probably done to the rest of our investors."
The group developed a model to assess the GTF's financial outlook over the forecast programme life of 45 years.
Hayes notes that the same model was applied to UTC's other aerospace activities.
Since the PW1100G – an option on the Airbus A320neo – entered service in 2016, the engine has been subject to a number of in-service issues that led to a wave of unscheduled maintenance events, and a temporary GTF delivery stop to Airbus in 2018.
Other PW1000G versions power the A220 – formerly known as the Bombardier CSeries – Embraer E2 series and under-development Mitsubishi MRJ regional jet
Additionally, the engine is an option on Russia's under-development Irkut MC-21.
These aircraft have not been affected by the same issues seen on the PW1100G.
Source: FlightGlobal.com
