The GE90 engine program reached a new milestone in October this year when the first 2 GE90-94Bs surpassed 100,000 flight hours.
Although the record was achieved by Austrian Airlines and KLM, General Electric, the manufacturer of the engines, is celebrating the fact that more units have reached this outstanding milestone.
Few GE engines accumulate 100,000 flight hours. In fact, fewer than 500 from GE Aviation and CFM International were able to achieve this feat in their entire history. Now, the GE90-94B engines joined the CF6-6, CF6-50, CF6-80C2, CF6-80E1, and CFM56-5C in accumulating that number of flying hours, equivalent to more than 11 continuous years in the air.
As reported by our media partner Aeroin, General Electric expects even more GE90-94B engines to surpass the 100,000 hours flown benchmark in the coming months.
«For any engine to reach 100,000 hours flown is a testimony to the reliability of the design, and for GE Aviation it is also significant, as the GE90-94B design is the basis for all GE commercial turbofans introduced since then,» said Jim Elliott, principal engineer, GE90 Services Systems Engineering.
«The introduction of the GE90 engine also assisted in establishing enhanced customer and product support operations that GE Aviation continues to use for new product launches today.» completed Jim.
FIRST TO REACH 100,000: The engine operated by Austrian Airlines was originally delivered in September 1997 and has completed approximately 11,500 flight cycles (takeoffs and landings) since that time. During its service life, the unit managed to transport around 3 million passengers to their destinations around the world and return them safely home.
THE SECOND: The KLM-operated engine was originally delivered to Air France in March 1998 and managed to complete 12,574 flight cycles (takeoffs and landings). KLM and Air France merged in May 2004 creating the Air France-KLM group. Following the consolidation, the combined GE90-94B and GE90-115B engine inventory of both airlines was centrally managed. One of these engines operated with Air France for 49,000 flight hours and with KLM for another 51,000.
Last year, the GE90 engine program celebrated its 25th anniversary of service and more than 100 million engine flight hours, considering GE90-94B and GE90-115B models. To date, more than 2,800 GE90s have been delivered.
