FARNBOROUGH, UNITED KINGDOM--(Marketwired - Jul 12, 2016) - Pratt & Whitney Canada's (P&WC) iconic PT6A engine is poised for considerable incremental growth across Europe thanks to a regulatory change that will open the continent's skies to single-engine instrument flight rules (IFR) flights for commercial passenger service. P&WC played a leadership role in helping the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) develop the guidelines that standardize and expand the use of single-engine turbine aircraft flying commercial passenger missions throughout Europe, expected to be in place by early 2017. P&WC is a United Technologies Corporation company (UTX).
"For European operators offering commercial passenger service, the approval of single-engine IFR positions the PT6A engine at the head of the pack and permits operators to reduce their operational costs. This provides operators a significant competitive advantage, opening up entirely new opportunities in charter and commuter services," says Denis Parisien, Vice President, General Aviation P&WC. "The European IFR certification, enabled by the benchmark reliability of the PT6A, allows business ventures that were previously not viable in Europe, and boosts demand for single-engine aircraft across the continent."
The PT6A engine has been an enabler of single-engine IFR commercial passenger operation in other parts of the world for two decades. Since the 1990s, IFR single-engine flight has been permitted in North America, New Zealand and Australia for aircraft powered by the PT6A. "We have been working closely with EASA on single-engine IFR certification," said Parisien. "The ruling will open up new short-haul routes between city pairs, including smaller airports that cannot accommodate jets but can easily manage small passenger turboprops."
Meeting Customer Needs with Continued Investment
The PT6 engine is a testament to P&WC's commitment to developing technology that meets operators' evolving requirements and increases the value of its offering to customers in order to respond their business and market needs. Since it entered into service in 1963, P&WC has consistently driven further innovations into the PT6, often opening the door to new applications and making new flight missions possible thanks to its unique attributes.
Today's PT6 engine is four times more powerful, has a 50 percent better power-to-weight ratio and is 20 percent more fuel efficient. P&WC has produced over 55,000 PT6 engines, of which 22,000 are in operation. The engine powers 140 different applications and has logged more than 400 million flight hours. Getting aircraft safely over the Atlantic every single time, it has the best safety record in the business - making it the engine of choice for single-engine IFR.