Aircraft engine leasing
 

Having a differing opinion with a friend concerning the percentage of CFM 56- 7 series and LEAP 1B engines that are leased as opposed to owned. He has customer access to the CFM website and says if you examine the figures something in excess of 90% of CFM 56 series units are leased.

This figure seemed high to me. Off the top of my head I said I thought that around 50% of modern narrow body a/c were leased units be that Boeing or Airbus.

I also understood that figures were a bit muddied due to spare units in lease pools then being swapped on, owned units coming off. I also thought that there were a few aircraft being delivered from the production line with owned airframes and leased engines and that taken as a whole there would be more leased engines as a percentage of the total number of engines than airframes on a narrow body 2 plus spares per a/c basis.

For example if 50% of the a/c population is leased then perhaps the leased engines would run to 55 -60% of the overall engine population.

Boeing are a bit more open about their customer base than CFM so I looked at the leased airframes as a percentage of overall orders for 737 MAX series. I added them all up and shock only 25% of the total disclosed orders for MAX are from the leasing companies. The balance of 75% are owned a/c.

So assuming leasing companies penetration of the 737 NG market as delivered is around that figure I don't see how the leasing companies could have ordered in excess of 90% of new delivered engines either by type or across all CFM types. I told him he must be misinterpreting the figures on the CFM customer website but he won't have it. Anybody out there care to throw any light on our difference of opinion:confused::confused:

I think there is a difference between an a/c lease and engine 'power by the hour' leasing where the engine is owned by the manufacturer and not a leasing company or airline.

25% of orders may be from specific leasing companies but airlines who order the aircraft will be attributed with the orders in the book (however some airlines may well be leasing/financing the aircraft from a bank or other source which and not 'owned').

As Spanners said, many new engines are power by the hour as this represents good economy for most operators and would probably lean me towards the 90% over the 50%, currently we are in a time of aviation production boom which has been contributed to by the variety of financing available for aircraft and engines.