Tuesday, March 20, 2018

Operational turbulence: Airlines in a bumpy ride due to engine snags

New Delhi: The plan to strengthen the existing fleet with more fuel-efficient aircraft but slipping into performance-related issues leading to embarrassment on account of plane groundings and flight cancellations reads like a chronology of recent events of two airlines in India — IndiGo and GoAir. However, the same story could also be told for flag-carrier Air India, which, in 2013, faced grounding of its brand new Boeing 787 Dreamliner aircraft. While in the longer term, this problem may get resolved for the two budget airlines, currently they are feeling the heat in the form of flight cancellations.

Due to cancelled flights, 37,964 IndiGo passengers were impacted in February 2018 alone, compared with an average of 4,295 passengers for the 13-month period ended January 2018. As per the information released by the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA), reasons for flight cancellations include technical causes, weather, commercial, operational and miscellaneous. On an aggregate basis for all airlines, 55.4 per cent of the flights cancelled in February were due to technical reasons.
Air India had ordered the Dreamliners, which were made out of light-weight composite materials, to replace its existing fleet of the older generation fuel-guzzling wide-bodies 777s and 747s. The new passenger jets, back then, were said to play a key role in the revival of the debt-laden airline.

However, in January 2013, less than six months after Air India took delivery of its first 787, the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) ordered a general grounding of these jets, which prompted other regulators in other countries, including India’s DGCA, to echo the directive. The concern at that point in time pertained to possible leakage from the aircraft’s lithium ion batteries that could corrode equipment and potentially cause fires. FAA’s order had come after several airlines across the world witnessed incidents on board their Dreamliners.

Come 2017, French airframe manufacturer Airbus’ new age A320neo aircraft equipped with US-based Pratt & Whitney’s PW1100G geared turbofan engines, which promised better fuel efficiency, began showing some performance issues due to which there were a number of mid-air engine shut downs. One could not blame the airlines for choosing a fuel-saving product given nearly 40 per cent of an airline’s cost is towards fuel. At the time, Pratt & Whitney could not provide enough number of spare engines due to which certain aircraft remained on the ground for weeks. This led to cancellations of hundreds of flights. This particular problem with the PW1100G model of engines pertained to premature degradation of one of the carbon seals and the combustion chamber, which according to industry experts was primarily due to the saltiness and pollutant particles in India’s atmosphere. For a while, the two airlines operated these aircraft under certain restrictions but later, the problem was said to be solved.
20/03/18 Pranav Mukul/Indian Express
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