Listen: 777 freighter unaffected as Pratt-powered airframes face grounding

Two unrelated instances of engine failure occurred over the weekend involving different models of Pratt & Whitney engines powering a United Airlines 777-200 and a Longtail Aviation 747-400BCF. Both incidents are under investigation, and while no fleetwide recommendations have been issued for the Pratt-powered 747s, Japan’s Civil Aviation Bureau and the FAA have grounded the 777-200 fleet powered by the engine type. In a statement, Boeing expressed its support for the suspension of the sixty-nine active and fifty-nine stored 777s powered by Pratt & Whitney 4000-112 engines. 777 freighters, meanwhile, are all powered by the GE90 and unaffected. In this podcast episode of Cargo Facts Connect, Senior Editor Charles Kauffman and Jim Edgar, Senior Consultant of Cargo Facts Consulting, revisit how the 777 ended up with a single engine option, and discuss the level of thought engine manufacturers have historically given to freighters when designing power plants for new widebody passenger models. A transcript is available below. This transcript has been generated by software and is being presented as is. Some transcription errors may remain. Charles Kauffman The 777-200 program launched in 1990, with three engine options from General Electric, Pratt and Whitney and Rolls Royce. And then by 1999, the GE90 was really the only option available. Jim, how do we get from three options to just one? Jim Edgar Well, Charles, it was not a a linear progression or a linear decision. But to put kind of things into context, the, you know, the triple seven 200, entered service in 1995. With the three engine options, and we, we stretched it to a 300 passenger version for capacity, and it became apparent that the, we needed more capacity. And obviously, in order to have that happen, in terms of a range, proper range for their customer airlines. We needed more powerful engines, bigger power plants. And so at the time that the triple seven 300 er was being envisioned the various engine manufacturers were basically bidding and trying to meet specifications of the envisioned stretch, and the invasion longer range aircraft, well, the freighter was part of that. So we convened meetings in early 2001, with customers specific freighter customers to find out what they wanted, so that it played in there, the freighter requirements for range for lift capability on the 200 size, fuselage versus the 300. So it's hard to separate out what drove what but certainly the, the freighter as envisioned, was part of the consideration. And then it became apparent that General Electric was going to be much more aggressive, and much more interested. And so it kind of went from there. So the freighter was part of really the drive to increase the lift capability of the kind of the new generation engine for the triple seven 300. Er, and then, of course, also the 200. LR was in there someplace to Charles Kauffman So even though the first 777 freighter was delivered years after that agreement between Boeing and General Electric, cargo was a consideration. And that did factor into some of those discussions back before the agreement was reached. Jim Edgar As we began discussion with customer airlines, it became apparent that there was great interest in the triple seven freighter as envisioned and, and that the requirements would be such that there would be a new engine. And as I mentioned, General Electric, it's a it's a very complex competition among engine manufacturers to get on an airplane, new airplane. And, obviously, besides meeting the specs that the manufacturer lays down, there's discussions with customers, too, on what their requirements are. And that's where we played in from the freighter standpoint of soliciting from freighter customers, what did they want? What did they need in terms of range, what they need in terms of weight capability on the aircraft? So it's all in there, and obviously, you can't, because of the lower number of units, and I think we're around 200 right now, in service out of 2000 triple seven airframes total, that 200 or freighters, you know, it's usually someplace between eight to 10%. You would anticipate, so, freighters can't command their own engine type, but it's one of the one of the considerations and certainly engine manufacturers are very interested in in meeting those needs because it is a significant model. Charles Kauffman Would you say that this was true even of the freighter models that preceded the 777 freighter, if we go back to that 747 400, you know, was cargo, an important consideration? Jim Edgar think that there's always a tension when a manufacturer goes to invasion to new aircraft and, and establish requirements. And that is, from a customer standpoint, a customer airline, they want competition among engine manufacturers to get a better price and to get something that's more tailored to their needs. But from the manufacturer standpoint, they just soon have exclusivity on a particular airplane type for a number of reasons. And from an OEM standpoint, the manufacturer, the aircraft manufacturer standpoint, it's much easier to design interfaces, if you only have one engine type to do that, otherwise, you know, you might have different pylons, different cells, that all the different things that have to go into putting an engine on a wing. So you know, there's a basic tension between what the customer airlines want, of course, each customer line has a different idea of what engine they want. So, you know, you don't want to lose a sale because you don't offer a particular engine type. So it's, it's quite a, quite an exercise initially in determining, and, again, that the freighter operators were just one aspect and one element but a significant one. And there were requirements that had to be met. But for the seven for that had been around much longer. And I think right from the beginning, it was anticipated that there would be various engine types offered. And we wanted to continue that, because we had so many customers that were likely candidates to replace their craft. And so we, we didn't want to lose any along the way and every one of the engine manufacturers wanted to be a player and maintain their position on the aircraft with a good you know, a good production run anticipated. So I think there were slightly different dynamics, as I looked at the the census for the triple seven as an example, I think about 1200 out of the 2000 that are in service have G 90 on the on the aircraft. So General Electric was pretty significant right from the beginning of the program, and Pratt had the history they had the customer base, but General Electric was pretty aggressive in approaching the triple seven and and you know, ultimately, they commanded a dominant market share on that aircraft. So it was kind of natural that the triple seven would have a single engine type and our customers liked what was being offered on that or invasion on that aircraft and Angie wanted to wanted to satisfy them. Charles Kauffman All right, and in which factors are typically of greatest relevance to cargo operators, particularly when when multiple engine options are available? Jim Edgar Yeah, I think for cargo operators would be similar to passenger operators, but with some slightly different twists to it, but you know, the, if they meet, assuming that an engine offering meets all of the requirements of the aircraft manufacturer, it's been accepted in the design phase. Obviously, fuel burn is going to be very important and corsets, a combination of both the engine and the airframe itself, but maintenance cost intervals. They aren't always the same depending on the engine type, commonality, if it's a combination carrier that has a large passenger fleet, They're going to, they're going to want to maintain some commonality because usually the freighter fleet is significantly smaller than the passenger fleet size. So they don't want to have separate engine types, separate maintenance programs and so on. And the the most important one, Charles of all is going to be caught. So you know, how aggressive is each of the engine offerings in terms of price, and how much are they willing to, to come around to the customers requests. So, I think all of those play together in some form, some are more important than others, but fuel burn, maintenance, interval, maintenance, cost, commonality, and cost are all very important, especially now that with new freighters, utilization for both the passenger and the freighter fleet are very, very similar. So you don't have aircraft sitting around, they're just too expensive. And so you're going to have the very similar considerations in terms of engine selection for freighters as you do for passenger aircraft. Charles Kauffman That's an interesting point you make so that divergence has started to narrow in in recent years and certainly complex decision but thank you for sharing your insights today, Jim. Jim Edgar My pleasure, Charles, and hope that this has been of benefit to our listeners.

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