Larry_V

Maybe I don’t have any big business sense but can someone explain to me how you can make a product (funded by the customer no less), sell said product to your customers (who funded the development), find out that said product is defective and have your customers pay for the fix? As a small business owner if I told my customers that “I have a fix for the problem my product is experiencing but I need you to pay for the fix”, they would have me hauled into court and the judge would take their side! I understand that the plane is being funded by the US and NATO but as it sits now this is in the $1M+ per plane. The US and NATO didn’t make the engineering mistakes, Pratt did. I just don’t like it when my tax dollars are misused. Rant over.

3 replies

joe5

Just an endless hole where our tax dollars continue to flow!

rpstrong

GE’s proposal will deliver “revolutionary capabilities” - but don’t all turbines revolve?

rpstrong

There are two different issues involved: the cracked fuel line, and the Engine Core Upgrade (ECU). The fuel line fracture was caused by harmonic vibrations which only affected a “small” number of engines, and which takes about half an hour to fix.

Dunno who is paying for that, or what the total cost is.

However, the $2.4B ECU proposal is for upgrading the engines to “Block 4” capabilities - an improvement program, not a defect fix.

Jim_Kabrajee

GE trying to elbow into the procurement process reminds me of a scene in the original Top Gun, where Mav is Ice man’s wing man. The competition between them comes to head when Ice is taking too long to get into position for a shot and Maverick pressures him to move over and finally screams, "I’m in!!

Followed by Mav losing control and Goose dies.

1 reply

beverly1joan

So how many years will it take to build this clean sheet design? Also to troubleshoot and fix the things that come up in devlopmental work.

597Ryan

Russ - this seems to be a rather incomplete look at the re-engine debate with an unrelated field issue (on a different engine entirely) tacked on at the end.

Why not go into detail regarding the step-change improvements of the XA100 vs ECU? What about the improvements of the ECU vs block 4 req’ts? Schedule? Testing history? Why nothing about XA101 and its status? Not even a mention of adaptive technology?

johnbpatson

That engine is huge. No wonder they can only fly for an hour before needing to refuel. Whatever happened to small, fast and deadly?

2 replies

pilotmww

Welcome to aviation!

rpstrong

They got sucked into the intake.

jethro442

Your maybe is correct. Pratt did not offer an off the shelf known product. Were Pratt to take the risk (no company in their right mind would have) the price to the USG would have increased exponentially. The USG would not have been able to afford the engines. The USG took the risk and got a better price than it otherwise would have gotten. Even as bad as it sounds.

rkphillipsjr

Not quite. GE also had an engine proposal (my day job at the time) at the beginning of the program, in 2005. At one point, two engine suppliers were proposed, if possible. Budget cuts forced a choice.

rkphillipsjr

I work in the GE Aerospace GE9X program. That engine isn’t huge!