GE Aerospace plans this month to deliver its 500th Passport turbofan engine, a milestone coming seven years after service entry and as GE shifts to producing a single variant for the Bombardier Global 8000 business jet.
“It’s at about a 99.9% dispatch reliability for our customers. It is over-performing from a specific fuel consumption standpoint,” GE manager of business aviation Melyvn Heard says at the NBAA-BACE exhibition in Las Vegas.
Heard says the 19,000lb (84.5kN)-thrust Passport burns 2-3% less fuel than the next best engine in its class.
GE and partners IHI Aerospace and Safran Aero Boosters developed the Passport for Bombardier’s 7,700nm (14,260km)-range Global 7500, which entered service in 2018. It made slight tweaks for the version used on the 8000nm-range Global 8000, which regulators certificated in July.
The engine family has logged some 600,000h of flight across 200,000 cycles, says Heard.
Bombardier plans to phase out Global 7500 production and transition entirely to assembling Global 8000s, meaning GE will likewise soon stop assembling the specific Passport variant. But the engines are nearly identical, excepting a software tweak and “different ratings scheme”, Heard says.
It assembles the business jet engine at the same Lafayette, Indiana plant where it builds Leap turbofans.
Bombardier chief executive Eric Martel said in May that engine shortages were holding up aircraft production rates. He did not specify engine manufacturers, though production hiccups have been widespread throughout the supply chain and have particularly impacted engine output. GE, Honeywell and Rolls-Royce supply engines to Bombardier.
“The supply chain is extremely challenged right now,” GE’s Heard says. “We’re addressing those challenges as we move forward, but there are opportunities for us to improve.”
Story corrected on 15 October to note that GE produces Passports in Lafayette, Indiana and that the Global 8000’s Passport was certificated in July.
