Flight Daily News

Northwest Airlines has extended its contract with Snecma Services for maintenance of the CFM56-5A engines powering its fleet of 150 Airbus A319s and A320s. The deal is worth $3 billion and will run until 2020.

Northwest is Snecma Services' biggest customer and the contract doubles the volume of the French company's maintenance work on its CFM56s.

Andrew Roberts, executive vice-president, operations, of the airline, says: "We looked very hard at other maintenance suppliers - there are a lot of them out there. The differentiator was the fact that Snecma Services has a deep involvement in understanding and supporting the way our business works."

Competition for CFM56 maintenance business is more intense than ever as the number of engines in the field increases with the continued strong sales of Airbus and Boeing narrowbodies.

Snecma services senior vice-president Alex Fain says the number of CFM56 shop visits will increase from around 2,000 per year today to "at least 3,000 in the next 8-10 years".

He says Snecma Services, which claims to be world number two in CFM56 maintenance, "expects to take its share of the cake".

Fain reveals that under its new structure as part of the Safran Group, the company is working with Sagem on offering customers permanent engine diagnostics using remote monitoring.