A320neo engines compared

Recently, in March, CFM revised their certification documentation for the LEAP-1A engine. There now is a G02 version and Addison Schonland from AirInsight already explained the differences between the original G01 certification standard and the G02.

The higher stated weight of the G02 is due to the fact that the EBU is now included in the weight. If we now look at the documentation of the competing PW1100G-JM engine from P&W we see that the EBU is included in it’s weight also.

The weight of the PW1100G-JM is 2857.6 kg or 6300 lbs.

The weight of the LEAP-1A (G02) is 3153 kg or 6936 lbs.

 

Indigo business model threatened by PW1100G?

Yesterday I read that Indigo sees their business model threatened by the engines of their A320neo – because of  the longer start-up times of the PW1100G (dependent on how long the engine was out after shutdown) the aircraft has to wait up to 2 min. longer with their engines at idle before the aircraft can begin to roll and taxi for takeoff.

Now let’s have a look if there is anything in this claim by looking at how Indigo actually operates their aircraft:

According to flightradar24 the 3^rd A320neo (VT-ITA) flew on May 2^nd from Delhi to Nagpur. The aircraft landed perfectly on time at 3:40am (UTC). It took off again 52 minutes later, 7 minutes later than scheduled but early enough to arrive back in Delhi 4 min. ahead of the scheduled arrival at 5:56am.

The 2^nd leg of the day went to Bangalore with a scheduled departure at 7:30am (actual departure time 7:55am). The aircraft arrived Bangalore 3 min. ahead of schedule at 10:17am. Scheduled departure back to Delhi was at 11:15am, which was missed by 9 min. Arrival in Delhi then was 5 min. ahead of schedule at 13:50am.

So we can see no delays stemming from the start-up times. The 2 min. longer start-up time is an the maximum, which only occurs when the engine was off for about 2.5 hours. But turn-around times for the two legs was below one hour, so the extra start-up time should be