Embraer has hailed a “turning point” for the Pratt & Whitney PW1900G geared turbofan (GTF) engines that power its E2 twinjets, saying it expects no aircraft to be grounded by related issues by the end of next year.
“The second half of 2025 was a turning point,” said the chief executive of Embraer Commercial Aviation Arjan Meijer during a briefing at the Dubai air show on 17 November.
“We expect to be at zero AOGs [aircraft on ground] by the end of 2026.”
Meijer suggests that amid a significant capacity expansion at P&W, the engine-maker has been able to “really condense” shop visits and completions that were previously taking “a long time”.
Furthermore, new engines emerging from P&W today are of a build standard that is suitable for all operating environments, Meijer states, including the challenging operating conditions seen in markets such as the Middle East.
“We are very confident about the engines that are leaving the factory,” he says.
An E2 customer, Royal Jordanian Airlines, agrees that the situation has improved.
“We had one aircraft that was grounded between November and April but then the spares caught up and now we are okay – we went through the summer without any issues,” says Royal Jordanian chief executive Samer Majali, speaking to FlightGlobal in Dubai.
“Pratt & Whitney is dealing with the [PW1900G] engine much better than the [PW1100G] in terms of throughput through the MRO and in terms of deliveries,” he adds, the latter variant being an A320neo-family engine option.
For its part, P&W said in Dubai that it continues to introduce durability improvements for the PW1900G and the wider PW1000G family of powerplants.
A suite of hot-section improvements is being incorporated into the engines with a further package derived from those on the GTF Advantage that is currently in the design and testing phase.
Echoing Embraer’s comments, P&W says those enhancements, plus additional investments in its MRO network, will “clear the AOG situation” for PW1900Gs by the end of 2026.
P&W issued a recall notice for the PW1000G-family of GTFs in 2023 – covering the PW1100G, the PW1500G that powers the A220, and the PW1900G – due to powder-metal manufacturing errors that left some engines with defective metallic components.
That process combined with supply-chain issues and time-on-wing concerns among customers to significantly affect the availability of aircraft as many were grounded for extended periods.
