Tracking A Tumultuous Year For The Engine Market

The Engine Yearbook 2021 will look at how the COVID-19 impacted market sees the eventual recovery.

Every edition of the long-running Engine Yearbook has covered the most pressing issues of its day, but never before have its maintenance, technology and finance sections been so dominated by a single theme.

For this writer, there is a growing fear that readers are fed up with reading about the impact of Covid-19; indeed, my ‘C’ key has been battered into illegibility by its repeated spelling.

Unfortunately, though, there is no avoiding it, so fundamental has the virus been to upending every aspect of aviation.

With that in mind, Engine Yearbook 2021 kicks off with a look at how engine numbers and maintenance demand will pan out over the next years.

The maintenance section also examines how we arrived at this point, tracking the impact on MRO as the crisis progressed through 2020. A separate feature examines how the pandemic has changed engine storage requirements, while there is also a look at the growing field of virtual table inspections.

This edition also focuses on whether a hiatus in air travel demand will boost development of greener propulsion technologies and, if it does, what this may mean for the aftermarket.

There is also a feature on how the crisis has reversed the balance of supply and demand for spare engines, as well as other impacts on engine lessors. We also consider the new interplay between the leasing, materials and MRO markets, and the expected surge in green-time leasing.

For those wishing to avoid any more coverage of the virus there are also features on the renaissance of supersonic propulsion, the limitations of predictive maintenance and a recently identified fatigue risk for titanium components.

Happy holidays and a here’s hoping to a better new year!

Alex Derber

Alex Derber, a UK-based aviation journalist, is editor of the Engine Yearbook and a contributor to Aviation Week and Inside MRO.