FlightGlobal.com
Home
Premium
Archive
Video
Images
Forum
Atlas
Blogs
Jobs
Shop
RSS
Email Newsletters
You are in:
Home
Aviation History
1969
1969 - 0029.PDF
A "Flight" special feature AERO ENGINES 1969 FLIGHT international, \ 2 January 1969 THREE QUITE DIFFERENT 40,0001b-47,0001b commercial turbo-fans are now under simultaneous development in the West to power the coming generation of large inter continental and airbus transports—a surprising fact considering that development and tooling costs for each engine are in the £70 to £100 million bracket and almost certainly the first of these big fans could have met the propulsion needs of the entire family of new US and European aircraft. For Pratt & Whitney, its big JT9D turbofan will provide a potent follow-on to the JT3D which powers the bulk of present large airline jet equipment. This latter engine plus the smaller JTSD and the technically and financially somewhat troublesome TF30 constitute the company's present production backbone. For the 1970s, the JT9D takes over as major breadwinner—backed by a growing contribution from spares for earlier engines. This type of situation faces the other two big engine com panies, Rolls-Royce and General Electric (Aircraft Engine Group). For Rolls-Royce, Spey production is near or past its peak and while the UK company too has a major and growing income from spares, it needs a large-scale development and production outlet for the '70s in addition to the potentially vulnerable Olympus 593 Concorde engine. The big RB.211 turbofan provides this in a most effective and timely manner. General Electric is over the hump with J79 manufacture and is filling the immediate future with major but relatively short-term production programmes for the large TF39 C-5A turbofan and the T64 tunboshaft for the AH-56A. The com pany has a declared intention of shifting emphasis more into the commercial market—the big CF-6 turbofan and GE4 turbojet are powerful indications of its early success in this direction. The fan in particular is timed to take over as GE's major production commitment in the early 1970s. Nineteen sixty-nine is therefore likely to be a crucial year in determining the balance of airbus turbofan orders, and hence the relative well-being of the three engine companies through to the mid-1970s. When each turbofan costs in the region of £i million (compared with about £10,000 for the de Havilland Ghost in the Comet 1), even a numerically small aircraft order is very big business. With the JT9D now in the DC-10 as well as the 747, the CF-6 is already under pressure. For the RB.211 there may be further opportunities, to a later time-scale, in the A-30OB and/or Three-Eleven, but again in competition with the US engines. Continued overleaf Symbolic of the advanced-technology fan engines which are being developed to power the forthcoming high-capacity transports, the three pictures presented here illustrate impressively the large diameter of the fans. Above, the Rolls-Royce RB.211 which has been selected to power the Lochheed L.I0I I. Developed primarily for the Boeing 747, the Pratt & Whitney JT9D is shown (below, left) while the General Electric (USA) CF-6 turbofan for the standard DC-10, in its test cell, is on the right
Sign up to
Flight Digital Magazine
Flight Print Magazine
Airline Business Magazine
E-newsletters
RSS
Events
