Although only in the job for two months, CFM International president and chief executive Jean-Paul Ebanga is certain of one thing: "You will be able to write at the end of the [Paris] show, 'CFM is back'. There are going to be significant order announcements for us at the show."

While CFM has never left its dominant position in the narrowbody market, with more than 60% of more than 11,000 CFM56 engines in operation around the world, a string of recent wins by competitor Pratt & Whitney with its geared turbofan architecture engine with no in-kind response from Cincinnati has left the impression that the Leap-X counteroffer is somehow struggling to gain traction.

Ebanga is set to break the silence in Paris with an amplifier that goes to 11. "CFM is set to be one more time the engine choice for this industry," he says. "No matter what happened during the past two years in the media world, we just keep ourselves focused on the real objectives." Ebanga says the media has been so enamoured with the new technology aspects of P&W's gear design that other, more important considerations, have been lost in the blog- and twitter-sphere.

Jean-Paul Ebanga
 © CFM

"CFM has produced more than 22,000 engines. We have more than 500 customers. We are taking more than three million people travelling each day," he says. "It's not just about new technology for us, when you have such high responsibility to allow people to travel [at low fare prices]. It's not only about running the company, we feel that we have a definitive responsibility in this industry. Of course we are working hard to put on the market a new generation of engines, but at the same time, need to make sure that the world as it operates with CFM engines today continues to be as safe and efficient."

CFM's Leap-X engine was selected by Comac as the sole Western engine for the C919 in late 2009, and will soon be revealed as the choice of as-yet unnamed operators of the Airbus A320neo, which offers customers either the PW1100G or CFM Leap-X engine. The CFM offering is ripe with technology - from the Snemca-contributed RTM 18-blade fan in front to the two-stage advanced technology high-pressure turbine at the rear, elements that tend to be associated with the drive to gain double-digit fuel burn reduction over the latest evolution of CFM engine.

From an operators perspective, however, Ebanga says that a detailed CFM survey conducted at the front end of the Leap programme revealed that the primary directive for airlines is reliability. "The second driver was fuel burn," he says. Third and fourth were maintenance costs and environmental friendliness, respectively, he adds.

"With that in mind - the four priorities - we started to think about what would be the best solution in terms of a value proposition," he says. "We went through a very detailed analysis considering all the technologies and architectures we had, from the existing CFM56 to open rotor designs. Because reliability was the first key driver, we needed to make sure at the entry-into-service we will be offering the same reliability operators are experiencing today. This led to what the Leap architecture is today."

In the effort to maximise propulsive efficiency, which along with thermal efficiency, dictates fuel burn and emissions, CFM reduced the number of fan blades to 18 from 36 on the CFM56, and changed the material from metal (titanium) to a composite fan blade built with a Snecma-developed 3D composite fibre-placement system called resin transfer mould (RTM). "Even Joe the plumber can see it's a completely new world," says Ebanga. "Tomorrow, most of the engines flying in the world will still be using metal fan blades when we have second-generation composite fan blades. We are the only one mastering that technology in the world." P&W changed its fan material for the geared turbofan design, with an 18-blade fan made of bi-metallic materials it says are thinner than what can be made with composites.

Along with being 25% lighter than equivalent blades made of titanium, Ebanga says the RTM blades are flexible to the point where foreign object debris sucked into an engine will not cause damage. Foreign objects "will hit the blades, the blades will bend and recover to the initial position", he says. "The blade will be maintenance-free."

Ebanga says his previous job - chairman and chief executive of the Franco-Russian PowerJet - uniquely prepared him to understand the CFM culture - a company with meagre beginnings that almost did not survive. "It's a very interesting move from where I come from at PowerJet," he says. "Powerjet is where CFM was in the 1970s. We [at PowerJet] were fighting to win credibility in the marketplace. It was the first time in the aero industry that a joint team of Western engineers and Eastern engineers came together to produce a state-of-the-art engine. Since the jet engine industry was born, these two worlds were totally separate because of the Cold War. For the first time in history - bridging these two worlds to produce one of the best engines."

The PowerJet SaM 146 engine was certificated in June 2010. "It was a new engine in the marketplace, but also we felt that we were writing a new chapter of the engine industry story."

He remains impressed by the CFM story. "CFM had the first high-bypass engines in the narrowbody market, which led to a shift in terms of performance and efficiency. It set new standards in terms of dispatch reliability but also in ability to meet the service-entry specifications we were aiming for. By bringing this very high level of reliability, we enabled the air transport industry to reach some new highs in terms of operational efficiency. With seven flights a day, the narrowbody sector has a very highly dense schedule. That means if on the first flight in the morning, your engine is not running, it has a ripple effects through the day.

"With CFM being able to achieve a dispatch reliability of 99.98%, that's a tremendous level for our customers to operate the way they are operating today."

He says without that level of reliability, a turnaround time of 15-20min would not be possible - "period".

"People are talking a lot about fuel burn these days. We stress the fact that reliability to enable to optimal efficiency is most important driver of low cost industry. That means reliability is the backbone of the profitability of this business," says Ebanga. "We won't accept technology without the reliability."

Source: Flight Daily News

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