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P&W for 737 Replacement?
By Dominic Gates
Seattle Times aerospace reporter
Before Boeing commits to developing a replacement for its best-selling narrow-body jet, the 737, commercial airplanes chief Alan Mulally wants a breakthrough in engine efficiency.
He may have it sooner than expected.
Pratt & Whitney, hungry to reclaim its lost share of the huge market for narrow-body jet engines, is moving aggressively to ready "a game changer that takes us to the next level of propulsive efficiency," said Steve Heath, president of its commercial-airplane engine division.
Heath met with Boeing officials in Seattle last Friday to discuss progress on his company's so-called "geared turbofan" — an engine it claims will burn 12 percent less fuel than today's engines, cost up to 15 percent less to operate, and reduce noise and emissions as well.
Pratt has put development work on a fast track, with a ground test planned next fall and flight test in 2008. If the tests go well, Heath said Pratt could formally launch an engine for the narrow-body market by the end of that year. With a typical four-year engine-development program, that could allow Boeing to deliver a 737 replacement jet as early as 2012.
Mulally has said Boeing will have a new narrow-body ready to enter service sometime between 2012 and 2015, and Airbus insists it will be ready to respond. But both plane makers routinely downplay talk of an early launch, reluctant to curtail sales of recently updated existing models. The current Boeing 737s and Airbus A320s are selling well and have huge order backlogs.
The launch of the 787 depended crucially on next-generation engine technology to significantly reduce fuel burn. So it will be with the 737 replacement.
Pratt's geared turbofan, if it lives up to the promises, could let Boeing make an aggressive move early in Mulally's time frame, launching soon after the wide-body 787 enters service in 2008, while Airbus is still shouldering major development work on its wide-body alternative, the A350.
"We're not waiting," Heath said in a recent interview in London. "We're developing the technology. ... We'll be ready for it in 2008."
Boeing remains tight-lipped about its study of a 737 replacement. At the rollout this week of the latest and biggest 737 derivative, the 737-900ER, Carolyn Corvi, Boeing's vice president of airplane production, said it's hard to beat the current plane's efficiency, and she repeated the need for a new engine.
Could that be Pratt's geared turbofan? "We keep talking to them about it," Corvi said.
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