Pratt and Whitney upset with DGCA's decision of grounding A320neo planes

Grounded Indian planes will be up in air by end of April says company president

Engine maker Pratt and Whitney expressed disappointment with Indian regulator DGCA's decision of grounding 11 A320neo planes. However, the company has assured that it has resumed production of a fix late last week and will Indian airlines IndiGo and Go Air will have their planes flying by end of April. The two airlines due to this had  to cancel more than 600 flights till March 30. Of that IndiGo has decided to cancel around 480 flights while the rest are by Go Air.

The announcement would mean that 14 A320neo grounded planes with have to wait for more than a month before they fly again.

Indian aviation regulator DGCA on Monday grounded 11 Airbus A320neo aircraft due to recurring malfunction in their engines. Out of the 11 aircraft eight belong to IndiGo where as three belong to Go Air. The malfunction has occurred withcertain sub- population of engines manufactured by Pratt and Whitney (PW). The problem stems from a component in the engine that can show early signs of wear, and is located in an area that must withstand high pressure.

Robert F. Ludech, President, Pratt Whitney, commercial engines while addressing analysts said, "We are disappointed with the Indian regulator's decision, but what I can tell is that by end of April fleet will be back up in the air flying in India," Ludech said.

Eorupean Aviation Safety Regulator EASA had previously said that the DGCA's decision was unilateral and it will not follow the decision. EASA has said that a glitch in both engines would merit grounding of planes while DGCA had grounded planes with even a single faulty engine. Minister of State for Civil Aviation Jayant Sinha termed DGCA's decision as proactive. “We even asked airline to use only one of these identified engines in the aircraft as a precautionary step. However, after the incident on March 12 when an Indigo flight had to return to Ahmedabad because of engine failure, we decided to ground all such engines,”

PW's mitigation plan 

Ludech outlined the plan of retrofitting the planes. Out of the 55 effected types , PW has got back 22 engines from the airlines and Airbus and has started retrofitting work on them. PW will rework and then insert them into production. The fix involves replacing a new engine seal with an older one that had durability issues,  people told Bloomberg asking not to be named because the details haven’t been made public. The news agency said that While the fix should help persuade investors temporarily reverting to the old engineering model which was in itself flawed, may not be sufficient in the longer term.

"Unfortunately, the fix in the knife edge seal did not work the way we hoped for. So we immediately backed out the change and went back to the production line," Ludec told in his address to the analysts.