Originally Posted by
FangsF15
“…The decision comes after four years of recurring reliability issues, with two of the airline’s three A220s currently grounded…”
I wouldn’t get too worried about DL. An operation with 3 aircraft can’t take the GTF inspection/repair hit that we can with 80 aircraft and another 65 on order. Even Egypt Air’s 12 “abandoned” aircraft are a unique story.
I think it will definitely have a longer than planned "break in" period. Given the GTF issues with the NEO also, it will be a while before we operate them (all GTFs) as planned. This new engine concept is super efficient but I fear super maintenance intensive too. All that being said, there's no going backwards on engine technology. We will have to make operational adjustments like dwell time for warm up and shut down. More touches for MX and better parts distribution/availability will drive up some costs but we will have no choice but to adjust. It could be a tough slog though given management's reluctance to add these costs and accept lower utilization. I don't see the same dispatch reliability as legacy engines ever, but that will have to be accommodated or our famous metrics will suffer. Even the LEAP engines have their issues. As we get closer to squeezing all the energy out of a chemical reaction we will have more exotic ways to absorb and redirect it. There's just no way around adding complexity and that means more maintenance complexity and down time to operate them reliably and safely.