Duncan Aviation now has capabilities to disassemble, overhaul and assemble Pratt & Whitney Canada PW300 engines such as this one.
Duncan Aviation invested about $89 million in its new engine overhaul center for Pratt & Whitney Canada engines that nearly doubles its engine footprint at its headquarters. This is part of its effort to expand and deepen engine maintenance to support operators tip to tail.
The new 36,000-ft.² engine shop that opened in June at Duncan’s Lincoln, Nebraska facility includes 12 maintenance bays for engine overhaul—the complete disassembly, inspection, repair and rebuild process. It complements the original 40,000- ft.² engine facility there.
Pratt & Whitney Canada (P&WC) appointed Duncan Aviation a designated overhaul facility for PW300 and PW500 engines in October 2023, which builds from the line maintenance, hot-section inspection, LRU replacement and other routine maintenance it had been performing on P&WC for years.
While building a new facility wasn’t required by the new P&WC designation, Duncan wanted the additional space for the overhaul work. Of the 36,000 ft.², about 15,000 of it is dedicated to overhauls. In addition, Duncan doubled its warehouse to 10,000 ft.² to support engine activities and invested about $9 million in inventory to support the two P&WC engines. It also added vertical storage to maximize that space, and a 9,000- ft.² shipping and receiving area, says Scott Stoki, VP of engineer operations. The facility also includes offices, a storage room, a clean room and paint area.
The $89 million investment also incorporates tooling and new equipment, including a new balancing machine, two coordinate measuring machines, a rotor stack machine, vertical grinder, surface grinder, turbine blade grinder, media blast machines, dye penetrant inspection equipment, a magnetic particle inspection bench, a flame spray booth, as well as a new cleaning room. The flame spray booth “is going to give us the capability to do a lot of [approved] repairs in-house that would potentially have to get sent out for exchange and help us better control our turn times and inventory,” Stoki says.
Duncan Aviation’s existing 20,000-lb.-thrust test cell used for Honeywell TFE731 engines, which became operational in 2017, “is running all the time,” so it wanted to build a new 20,000-lb.-thrust Atec test facility to support the PW300 and PW500 engines, Stoki says. He expects the new test cell that “will be outfitted with more testing equipment than the original” due to Pratt & Whitney requirements to be certified this year.
Duncan employees working on the PW300 and PW500 engines completed factory training at Pratt & Whitney and FlightSafety International.
In addition to building up its team for the new shop, it also plans to expand its in-house repair development capabilities called Duncan Manufacturing Solutions.
Duncan Aviation is an authorized engine overhaul provider for TFE731 and a minor repair provider for Honeywell HTF7000s turbofans. Earlier this year Honeywell authorized it for RE100 APU heavy maintenance—the capability of which Duncan expects to come online in 2027.
The company would like to continue expanding its APU and engine overhaul capabilities, Stoki says.
If it gains additional approvals, Duncan seems ready to invest in additional shops to make it happen.
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