Canadian maker sees potential venture as springboard for development of powerplants for future business jets
Pratt & Whitney Canada is considering the $1 billion development of a new centreline engine for Bombardier’s CSeries airliner following the decision of other engine manufacturers not to compete.
“We are in discussion with Bombardier and are proposing jointly an engine that can do what has to be done to make that successful,” says P&WC vice-president engineering John Saabas. “We are confident we’ll get there, but it is not done until it’s done,” he says.
The company also sees the venture as a springboard for the development of a new family of engines for the next generation of high-end corporate aircraft, and possibly new follow-on regional jets. “We missed the regional jet wave at Pratt & Whitney Canada and we don’t want to pass on another opportunity,” says company president Alain Bellemare.
“We are still defining the engine,” adds Bellemare, who says provisional engine data will be supplied to Bombardier to allow the airframe manufacturer to work out the performance characteristics of the CSeries for offer to airlines. The schedule, assuming a go-ahead later this year, will see engine certification in mid-2009. “This is very do-able. We don’t consider this is an aggressive schedule,” says Bellemare.
The engine core will be partially based on earlier work conducted on the PW800 technology demonstrator, which was originally conceived to power new regional jets and large business jets. Although P&WC lost out in recent years to General Electric’s CF34 and Snecma/Saturn’s SaM146 for the Chinese ARJ21 and Russian Regional Jet (RRJ), respectively, the company has continued to look for opportunities to use the technology.
As part of International Aero Engines, P&W studied powerplants in the 21,000-23,000lb (93.5-102kN) thrust category for the CSeries requirement, whereas P&WC’s study is focused on the 16,000-22,000lb range.
Source: Flight International
