With both the IATA AGM in India and Aviation Week’s Engine Leasing, Trading & Finance events imminent, Flight Friday looks at how Indian narrowbody engine flight hours have compared since the beginning of 2022.
The current leader for narrowbody power is the CFM International Leap engine. Monthly hours have multiplied by over 12 times from the beginning of 2022 to April 2025, due to the growth of in-service Leap-powered aircraft from 135 in January 2022 to well over 400 in April 2025. With a big push from Indian operators to grow, and over 1,000 Leap-powered aircraft still on the orderbooks, this aggregated utilization will continue to rise.
The legacy CFM56 takes second place, accounting for over 17% of the current monthly utilization; it is a workhorse engine that still contributes to moving people and goods around India. With an in-service fleet that has remained reasonably consistent since the beginning of 2022 and considering the issues that are impacting the latest generation engines, CFM56-powered aircraft will continue to fly onwards.
The Pratt & Whitney PW1000G geared turbofan (GTF) comes in at third place, having lost its market share lead from the beginning of 2022. The GTF has been plagued with durability issues, which predominantly came to light in the harsher Indian environment, which has led to a drop in the in-service fleet. This was further compounded with the demise of the airline GoAir (Go First) in 2023, which had a fleet of GTF-powered Airbus A320neos.
The legacy IAE V2500, built by International Aero Engines (IAE), completes the top four. However, it only contributes to less than 5% of monthly hours. With only a few dozen airframes still in service, the expectation is that these numbers will decrease over the coming months.
This data was put together using Aviation Week’s Tracked Aircraft Utilization database.
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