New Engine Woes Disrupt Europe’s Engine Segment

Shifting engine market dynamics driven by fleet changes, supply chain issues and the potential of emerging technologies are leading maintenance providers to consider new strategies. During Aviation Week Network’s Aero-Engines Europe conference in Amsterdam Sept. 10-11, panelists discussed how these factors are affecting their operations.

The Aviation Week Network’s 2025 Commercial Fleet and MRO Forecast predicts that the next decade will see a shifting dynamic in which shop visits for the CFM International Leap engine start to overtake those of legacy engines by 2033. Although the older CFM56 is forecast to be the busiest in-service engine next year with around 20,000 flying, this number is expected to drop to about 12,500 by 2034. Meanwhile, around 9,000 Leap engines are predicted to be flying next year and more than 30,000 over the next decade.

This dynamic is expected to bring both challenges and opportunities for engine MROs. Jean-Louis Forest, AFI KLM E&M’s senior vice president of group engine product, noted that as mature engines such as the CFM56 are still at their peak, the industry will start to see some early removals of new engine types such as the Leap. “The key question is how the capacity and the shops can cope with both of those,” he said. “Continuously investing is really important, which is what we have done at Air France, both in Amsterdam and Paris, even during the COVID-19 period. We had to be resilient to save cash, but we didn’t cut investment, and I think that was the right decision.”

Vincent Metz, vice president of business development Europe at SR Technics, expects these dynamics to cause “a huge challenge for the industry.” He said SR Technics’ strategy is to “act aggressively,” adding new production lines and capabilities and growing the capacity they expect the industry to need. “I think the unreliability of the new platforms basically proves that we will need this capacity maybe sooner than we’d hoped for,” he added.

“I think we have probably less than five years to actually get everything set for the new-generation engine shop visits, and the fact that there are some quick turns at the moment may be a liability issue for some constrained networks under OEM control,” said Maciej Maciejewicz, head of powerplant at LOT Polish Airlines. “But on the other side, it’s an opportunistic way for independent shops to get into the business.”

One shop that could benefit is Aero Norway, which focuses on CFM56 services. Chief Operating Officer Dag Johnsen said the company is exploring big investments to cater to Leaps in the coming years, but it is trying to find the right balance. “You don’t build a shop overnight,” Johnsen, said noting that acquiring the right tooling, test cells and technician experience takes time. Meanwhile, the company must balance new investment with CFM56 services to “keep the lights on,” but it is looking at Leap module work and trying to phase in the needed tooling and capability for some special procedures.

However, airlines like LOT are concerned about finding slots for smaller repair issues on these engines. Maciejewicz said he sees a tendency for MROs to turn down work on smaller repair issues because they do not want to disrupt overhaul lines for smaller, less profitable work scopes. “Sometimes it’s time-consuming to get the maintenance contract in place, and you don’t want to have 10 contracts instead of one for a specific engine,” he said. “If you have a provider that can do both heavy and light work scopes, that’s very helpful.” He added that this could be an opportunity for smaller shops to build capability and take the load off bigger shops.

“Anticipated forecasting for planning removal is key, and there is huge demand from customers to secure the slots and maintenance planning,” Forest noted. “When I see the situation today where 15-30% of one aircraft type can be grounded because of engines, it’s an incredible situation. It shows that this has to be anticipated now that we see the peak of demand, so it’s very important to think about your maintenance strategy now because that’s a turning point of the industry.”

AI Opportunities in Engine MRO

Artificial intelligence (AI) is one tool that could give MROs and operators a head start in forecasting. Johnsen said Aero Norway is looking at combining AI with its inventory management system to see what parts it needs in stock to avoid gaps. Maciejewicz at LOT also considered the technology’s potential for parts issues.

“Right now, what we are looking for from our [MRO] providers is the control of vendors, because parts can be either replaced, repaired or exchanged. If AI can help you build a stock of used serviceable material (USM) that will reduce the price and have all the necessary paperwork to back that up, that would be perfect,” he said. “Then we would need another AI agent to convince lessors that those parts are good.”

However, Metz at SR Technics cautioned that AI could not magically solve the industry’s supply chain issues with new-generation engines. “We are in a situation where we try to divide and distribute the scarcity. If you look at the new engines and the drivers behind unpredictability, I really think it requires the industry to also look at our business model,” he said. “How do we distribute these new risks over the customer, the operator, the owner, the MRO and the OEM? We should make sure that the risks are addressed to the party most capable of finding solutions, and when we talk about supply chain, it’s really about the basics of producing more parts. An AI will only conclude that there is scarcity, which we already know, so we need to make sure that we set things up in a way where we try to make people responsible for the things they can really solve.”

PMA/DER Landscape

Industry openness to parts manufacturer approval (PMA) and designated engineering representative (DER) repairs in the engine segment has continued to increase given the price hikes in the wider component market. With some shops now reporting biannual price escalations of OEM parts leading to a majority cost on an engine repair task, the market for secondhand USM parts also has seen pricing spikes. However, some technical hurdles exist as barriers to increased adoption.

Sebastian Groeger, vice president of strategic business development at Chromalloy, said his company offers approximately 62 PMA parts, most of them airfoils. “Some of them are among the most advanced airfoils, so making these parts and developing them is an expensive process,” he said. Groeger discussed the difficulty in obtaining approval from regulators such as the FAA. “The FAA is busy and struggling internally, and explaining a very advanced part is one of our biggest obstacles,” he added.

“What is difficult today is to get them approved at airlines,” says Christophe Giraud, senior commercial director at AAR, which trades but does not make PMA or DER parts. “Technical teams are very busy, and it takes time to approve a PMA or a DER, but there may not be the structure or the workforce to do it.” Giraud added that this is prevalent during a shop visit, when an airline is mindful about turnaround times. “Most of the time, customers say they’re not against DERs, there just isn’t the time to get approval for this special project,” he said.

Giraud noted that lack of material affects availability of critical engine parts, such as on the General Electric CF6-50.  “Most of the material found in the market for that [CF6] will be DER repairs for the engine’s turbine blades,” he said. Chromalloy does well on products related to this mature engine program, Groeger said, pointing out that they become more relevant to engines reaching the second half of their life cycles.

Danilo Colombo, vice president technical-engines at consultancy SGI Aviation, acknowledges the commercial advantage of alternative repairs and states that in some instances, they are 15-20% cheaper than USM parts. In terms of the types of carriers pursuing PMA and DER parts, Colombo said they typically will be flag carriers, which have engineering resources to analyze use of such parts and repairs, as opposed to smaller airlines.

Lessors have long been reluctant to use PMA and DER parts, and Colombo said it would be a step change if more airlines accept DER repairs, which remain a closed loop, in his view. Giraud noted that some lessors are open to such parts and repair alternatives, although not for critical engine parts.

In terms of the relationship between OEM, PMA and DER specialists, Chromalloy’s Groeger says this is dependent on the repair it carries out. “DER is a very wide term. There are very simple fixes, and then there are advanced repairs that move closer to a PMA,” he said. “We’ve seen, especially on the easier repairs, that the OEM has been adopting our repairs or developing something similar because the market acceptance was so large.” For more advanced repairs, Groeger identified Chromalloy as a competitor to OEMs more than a partner, given its aim to reduce costs.