CFM International will walk away from Le Bourget with orders for more than 1,000 of its Leap next-generation narrowbody turbofans for the Airbus A320neo family.

The order deluge follows 18 months of drought since a deal with Comac to make the Leap the sole engine of choice for the C919. During that time, competitor Pratt & Whitney has netted a steady stream of deals for its PW1100G geared turbofan on the Airbus aircraft, giving rise to the suggestion that CFM had perhaps lost the magic touch that allowed it to capture 60% of the narrowbody market with the CFM56 engine.

P&W did not walk away from Paris empty handed, however. The company secured 20 more orders for its PW1500G engine for the Bombardier CSeries and several hundred more orders for its A320neo versions of the engine. Officials knew the pre-Paris monopoly, which gave them several hundred of the first Neo orders, and made it launch engine, would not continue indefinitely. "We know it's not going to be 100% going forward," said P&W president Dave Hess, before the show. Overall, the company reports 900 firm and 500 options for the three members of the PurePower geared engine family as of 23 June.

Aside from the orders, Hess made news at the show with the announcement that on 20 June engineers had succeeded with the first test flight of the second pre-production PW1524G engine prototype, one week ahead of schedule.

Hess made it clear that P&W is going to be busy going forward, with 14 test engines running by the end of the year for the CSeries and the Mitsubishi MRJ regional, which uses a slightly smaller thrust-class geared turbofan.

CFM, meanwhile, came to the show reporting a surprisingly quick start-up of its second and almost-final complete core section for Leap-X1A, which officials says is an indicator of an engine "that wants to run". Other portions of the engine are also maturing in unison to support a 2013 first engine to test schedule.

Source: Flight International

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