New Delhi: The engine maker of Indigo and GoAir assured that the Jets which are grounded due to technical failures will take to skies again by April-end. The maker of the engine is an American company named as Pratt & Whitney.
Due to a series of in-flight engine failures had prompted the aviation regulator DGCA on March 12 to order the immediate grounding of Airbus A320neo aeroplane which was fitted with certain Pratt & Whitney (P&W) engines.
“You may have seen that the Indian authorities took a decision to ground the fleet in India that have engines of this… We’re disappointed with that decision, but I can tell you that by the end of April, that fleet will be back up in the air flying in India,” Pratt & Whitney president Robert F Leduc said during an interaction with United Technologies Corporation’s (UTC) investors. P&W is a subsidiary of UTC.
“So I think the three key points that you should take away is we’re back in production, we’re going to retrofit and rework the 55 engines that we shipped previously back to Airbus. We will make our full year production commitment to Airbus,” Mr Leduc said.
About 8 aircraft were affected which were running and were operated by Indigo and other three was operated by GoAir and were grounded after the directive from Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA).
Indigo and GoAir posted a curtailed flight schedule over their websites announcing that they will not operate more than 600 flights between March 15 and March 31. Out of this IndiGo decided to cancel 488 flights.
“We have a commitment to them. There’s still a certain amount of engines to support their aircraft delivery profile. We will make those deliveries. Admittedly, the timing is a little bit skewed because of the first quarter and having to rework engines, but we will catch that up primarily by the end of the third quarter. The fleet will be completely back in the sky by the end of April,” the P&W president said.
A flight which was under operation by Indigo equipped with same Company Bratt & Whitney experienced a technical glitch on March 12 in one of its engines. It landed on Ahmedabad airport. DGCA said there had been atleast three such incidents in 2018 alone with two involving IndiGo and one with GoAir aircraft.
PW1100 which was the affected engine, has a seal that causes several vibrations and the issue had frequently led to in-service shutdowns, the DGCA has said.
The US aviation regulator said in February that the P&W engines pose a shutdown risk as a result, after similar action by European regulators that month.