Pratt & Whitney Canada's PW800 has been selected as a finalist along with Snecma's SM146 for the Russian Regional Jet (RRJ) project, and could be launched as a full-scale project as early as next year, says president Alain Bellemare.
The geared turbofan is also in the running to power China's ARJ21 regional jet. Final engine decisions on both programmes are expected by the end of the year, he adds.
The General Electric CF34 and Rolls-Royce BR710 have been excluded from the RRJ engine contest. The PW800 is competing with General Electric's CF34, Rolls-Royce's BR710 and the SM146 for the AVIC 1 jet project.
P&WC has started running a second PW800 technology demonstrator at its Montreal, Canada site and displayed the first engine at Farnborough. The PW800 was launched at the 2000 show as the Advanced Technology Fan Integration demonstrator, and ran for the first time in March 2001.
The engine, which has also completed an acoustic test programme at P&W's site in Florida, is being developed to plug the thrust gap in P&W's portfolio between the PW300 and PW6000, or specifically the 10,000-20,000lb (45-89kN) thrust range.
Source: Flight International
