All SWISS A220 grounded

[gearlever]

Again engine trouble

[flight_mode]

Decision made mid-morning today, all 100s and 300s need to come home for an inspection.

[Denti]

Would be interesting to know if Air Baltic has the same problem or same amount of engine troubles in its fleet. Since they committed themselves to switch to A220 as an exclusive type that could hurt them considerably. Bad bet Martin?

[lederhosen]

It is noticeable that this turbine generation change seems more problematic than the last one. Almost all manufacturers seem to be effected one way or another. Be it RR with the 787, GE with the new 777 or PW with the A220 they are all struggling. I am quite relieved not to be flying one of these fancy new jets particularly on long etops sectors. I don’t want to tempt fate but the one ultra long haul twin that seems to work out of the box is the A350 which of course has another version of the RR Trent. So it seems to vary even within engine families, with differences such as blade coatings etc.

[romiglups]

Meanwhile BEA is looking for volunteers on 11/6 and 11/8 to find missing parts of the first incident ocurred on 07/25 twitter.com/BEA_Aero/status/1183830796680994818

[Jerbourg]

Inspected aircraft are returning to service acc to Flightradar 24's Twitter

Twitter

[Nothrills]

Originally Posted by Denti

Would be interesting to know if Air Baltic has the same problem or same amount of engine troubles in its fleet. Since they committed themselves to switch to A220 as an exclusive type that could hurt them considerably. Bad bet Martin?

Air Baltic has replaced 50 engines in 2 years of operating A220s:
https://simpleflying.com/airbaltic-a...engine-change/

[atakacs]

Originally Posted by Nothrills

Air Baltic has replaced 50 engines in 2 years of operating A220s:
https://simpleflying.com/airbaltic-a...engine-change/

Wow...
I guess it is P&W picking up the tab ?
Is anyone flying the 320neo with those engines ?

[stilton]

The GTF seems to be highly unreliable whereas the CFM alternative LEAP engine on the A320 has been working out well


Has P&W pushed technology too far in the quest for the lowest possible fuel burn ?


Those savings don’t count for much when you have to keep replacing engines, I hope there’s a permanent fix before there’s an accident


If not there’ll be a lot of second guessing and another modern jet transport grounded

[DaveReidUK]

Originally Posted by atakacs

Is anyone flying the 320neo with those engines ?

Er, yes, there are about 450 in service (including PW A321neos).

[Longtimer]

Originally Posted by Nothrills

Air Baltic has replaced 50 engines in 2 years of operating A220s:
https://simpleflying.com/airbaltic-a...engine-change/

“airBaltic can confirm that during the first two introduction years of Airbus A220-300 operations the airline had conducted 50 engine replacements due to different reasons, including planned and scheduled replacements.”

The maths

Now, according to airBaltic, the airline’s 14th Airbus A220 was delivered two years after the first aircraft. As the engine replacements occurred within the first two years of A220 operations, the engine replacements would have taken place across 13 Airbus A220 aircraft.

As the Airbus A220 has two engines, a fleet of 13 aircraft would make up a total of 26 engines. As such, if 50 engine replacements were required, every aircraft would have had each of its engines changed around twice in the space of two years.

What is more likely is that some of the older aircraft would have had more engine changes, and some of the newer aircraft would have had fewer engine changes as they hadn’t all been flying for the same period of time. However, to have an average of two changes per engine during the first two years does seem surprising.