IndiGo to ground over 30 aircraft due to Pratt & Whitney engine issue

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IndiGo is anticipating the grounding of over 30 aircraft in the fourth quarter of the ongoing financial year (Q4FY24) due to issues with Pratt & Whitney (PW) engines, taking the total number of grounded PW-powered jets to around 80 planes.

PW engines across the world are facing issues due to the impact of a powder metal defect, which could lead to component cracking.

IndiGo, which has a fleet of 334 planes, has already grounded around 40 PW-powered aircraft primarily due to the longstanding geared turbofan issue.

“We have recently received additional information on the powder metal issue from Pratt & Whitney, and based on our preliminary assessment of this, we anticipate Aircraft on Ground (AOG) in the range of mid-thirties in the fourth quarter (Jan-Mar 2024) due to accelerated engine removals. These groundings will be incremental to the current AOGs,” the airline said in a statement.

During the airline’s Q2 earnings call earlier this week, IndiGo CEO Pieter Elbers had said that the airline is taking various "mitigating measures" such as extending the lease of existing planes and obtaining aircraft from the secondary market on wet lease due to issues with its PW engines.

Elbers had emphasised that the focus should be on how the airline has consistently managed to expand its capacity in accordance with its guidance, despite the challenges posed by grounded aircraft.

“Based on this recent information as received, we can reconfirm our given capacity guidance for Q3 (Oct-Dec 23). In addition, we also confirm our earlier capacity guidance for the entire FY23-24 'in the North of mid-teens', significantly aided by proactive mitigation measures taken earlier by IndiGo,” the airline said.

In September, PW had announced that 600-700 engines installed on Airbus A320neo jets would need to undergo extensive quality inspections from 2023 to 2026.

Around two-thirds of these engine removals are planned for 2023 and early 2024.

IndiGo currently operates approximately 160 PW-powered planes in its fleet.

The airline carried 26.3 million passengers in the September quarter, observing a 33.4 per cent year-on-year growth.

Grounded airline GoFirst had squarely blamed PW for engine snags. The snags had led to the grounding of about half of its 54 aircraft due to a delay in the supply of engines by P&W.