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Flying high GE Aviation
The majority parts of GE H Series engine are manufactured in GE Aviation’s Prague plant
FLYING HIGH
The GE turboprop engines powering aircraft L 410
GE Aviation ranks as one of the largest aircraft engine manufacturers in the world. To put this into perspective: right now, there more than 2200 airplanes carrying over 300,000 people in the air thanks to GE’s engines. Romana Moares spoke to Zdenek Soukal, commercial director of the group’s Czech plant, about further investments into the Czech base.
If you look under the airframe of the GE H Series powered aircraft, this is what you find If you look inside the the GE H Series engine there are no fuel nozzles but an innovative centrifugal fuel slinger system and 3D aero blade design. The EEPC system enables it to control power and propeller by a single lever
IN 2008, GE Aviation entered the fast-growing segment of small turboprop engines manufacturing. It acquired an engine business from Walter, a Czech company with over 90 years of aviation heritage, to form GE Aviation Czech s.r.o. The company specialises in the design, production and servicing of turboprop engines at its integrated research and development and manufacturing facility in Letnany, Prague.
GE Aviation successfully launched the H Series turboprop family, incorporating GE’s 3-D aerodynamic design techniques and advanced materials to create a powerful, fuel-efficient, durable engine with no recurrent fuel nozzle inspections and no hot section inspection for a multitude of uses: agricultural, business turboprops, commuter and utility aircraft.
“GE infused its technology into the Walter M601 engine: the new turboprop H Series engine offered a 13 per cent better performance, 8 per cent higher efficiency in term of fuel consumption, and 15 per cent lower maintenance costs,” says the sales director.
The GE H80 was the first in the H Series, followed by the H75 and H85, all of which come with more shaft horsepower and improved fuel efficiency. For pilots and customers, the H Series engines (in the 750 to 850 shaft horsepower range) enable longer flights, combined with significantly enhanced hot-day take-off performance and highaltitude cruise speeds. Around the globe
Today GE designs, manufactures, sells and services GE turboprop engines to power over 30 different types of aircraft, carrying passengers and cargo across six continents. Built for durability and efficiency to withstand a wide range of climate conditions, GE turboprops can cover thousands of flight hours with minimal maintenance.
GE turboprop engines enable aircraft to handle anything from unpaved landing strips in Africa and Latin America to permafrost in Siberia. Today, more than 1200 L410 aircraft have been delivered throughout the world. The GE H Series engines have received nine certifications and are in operation on six continents, with 13 announced applications. To date, 20 million flight hours make the GE Turboprops a well-tested and truly reliable turboprop engine.
Examples of this wide range of applications include the commuter multi-purpose airplane L410 (of original Czech design), agricultural plane Thrush 510G (crop duster), or the business plane Nextant G90XT – the re-designed King Air C90 plane. “Today, GE Aviation Czech has two core businesses: the M601 product line (repairs only), and the H line, in production and further development,” explains the sales director.
“The latest addition to GE’s portfolio is a brand new engine for a single engine plane, Cessna Denali, manufactured by Textron Aviation,” says
Zdenek Soukal
Mr Soukal. “The 1300SHP-rated Advanced Turboprop (ATP) is the first entry in GE’s new family of turboprop engines aimed at Business and General Aviation aircraft in the 1000–1600 SHP range,” he explains. The ATP features an industry-best 16:1 overall pressure ratio (OPR), enabling the engine to achieve up to 20 per cent lower fuel burn and 10 per cent higher cruise power compared to competitors’ offerings in the same size class with 4000–6000 hour maintenance time between overhauls (MTBO) and class-leading performance retention.
“Our Prague turboprop business is unique in its sector thanks to the fact that all departments, such as the product development, production, major overhauls, repairs and maintenance as well as the manufacturing competence, related to the H and M601 turbo engines, are located in a single site. However, we have direct access to GE Aviation’s worldwide network and resources. Today, we employ 450 people and their numbers increase each year,” says Mr Soukal.
At the beginning of 2016, GE Aviation announced plans to spend over one billion USD on its ATP programme and to build its new turboprop business headquarters in the Czech Republic, creating more than 500 new jobs to join the existing manufacturing facility in Letnany. The headquarters are expected to open in several years in order to manufacture GE’s advanced turboprop engine (ATP) powering Cessna Denali – Textron Aviation Inc.’s new single-engine turboprop (SETP) aircraft.
Steady growth
GE Aviation Czech exports about 85 per cent of its output around the globe, mainly to regions with steady demand for reliable, low maintenance engines to be used in harsh conditions. Typical markets include those of Russia, South and Central America, Africa and China. “The L 410 plane equipped with our engine can land on the landing strip in Lukla, Himalaya, which is considered to be the most dangerous airport in the world,” says the company director.
He adds that in terms of the H Series engines, GE is about to launch the first delivery of the industry’s first Electronic Engine Propeller Control (EEPC) system with full auto-start capability. The EEPC is designed to significantly reduce pilot workload, utilising a single-lever control to integrate engine and propeller operation, eliminating overtemping and overtorquing to improve engine life and ease of maintenance.
“Each year our objective is to increase the number of engines sold as well as their number of applications,” says the director. “And we are succeeding. In the past two months alone, the company announced two new applications of the H Series engines: Wingglider Ltd, Europe’s largest skydiving company, selected GE Aviation’s H75 turboprop to retrofit its M601-D2-powered Dornier Do 28 fleet utilised for parachuting and skydiving excursions; the other project is the development of a brandnew H Series-powered high-performance aircraft featuring the EEPC unit for Blackshape, the designer and producer of carbon fibre aircraft.”
Every two seconds a GE engine-powered plane takes off somewhere in the world – and each two seconds, a GE engine/powered aircraft safely lands. “The safety of our engines and the satisfaction of our customers have always been our priority, and will continue to be in the future,” concludes Mr Soukal. n
