Pratt & Whitney Engine Fault: Indigo to ground over 30 aircraft in Q4

Faulty aircraft engine: Indigo may ground over 30 aircrafts in the fourth quarter of the current financial year, due to issues with Pratt & Whitney (PW) engines. As per Business Standard, the total number of Indigo's powered jets that are grounded has reached 80.

Fleets grounded

Indigo that has a total of 334 planes has already grounded around 40 PW-powered aircraft due to 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.

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Indigo CEO Pieter Elbers during the Q2 earnings call said that the airline is taking various "mitigating measures". The measures include extending the lease of existing planes and obtaining aircraft from the secondary market on wet lease due to issues with its PW engines.

He also emphasised on how the aircraft managed to expand its capacity in accordance with its guidance despite the challenges posed by grounded aircraft.

Pratt and Whitney Faulty Engines

The PW engines across the world has been facing issues due to the impact of a powder metal defect that could lead to component cracking. In September, the company had informed that 600-700 engines installed on Airbus A320neo jets would need to undergo extensive quality inspections from 2023 to 2026. The company had planned removal of about two-thirds of the engines for 2023 and early 2024. 

Grounded airline Go First had also blamed the Pratt and Whitney engines for the crisis it was facing.