Pratt & Whitney PW1000G

Start with Pratt & Whitney.

They build a power plant called the PW1100G, a geared turbofan that powers the Airbus A320neo family.

Neo stands for new engine option, and the aircraft earned that name.

It replaced the older generation A320 and became the most ordered commercial jet in history, largely because of its fuel efficiency gains.

Resolving a material contamination issue across hundreds of engines in service is not a single parts order.

Rebuilding manufacturing quality culture at a major airframe producer is not a one-year project.

The 2030 projection reflects those realities directly, Pratt, and Whitney is making measurable progress on the PW1100G repair program.

Boeing is rebuilding under new leadership with regulatory oversight driving accountability in a way it has not been driven before.

And the bad luck doesn't stop there.

You see, almost half of Spirit's aircraft fleet is composed of A320NEOs specifically powered by Pratt & Whitney's PW1100G engine.

This is an extremely advanced and efficient engine, which is why the airline acquired them in the first place, but their manufacturer identified a potential flaw in some of the metal used in these engines that could cause cracking in the turbine.

Therefore, they've had to move up the timeline for inspections on these engines, which initially took seven Spirit aircraft out of service, and since then has kept an above average number of the airline's planes out of revenue service compared to typical operations.

While Spirit is the US low-cost operator that relies most on this engine type and therefore is experiencing the most hardship from its issues, JetBlue and Frontier also use the PW1100G and therefore have also seen a revenue impact.

So with this combination of issues, airlines are just having to fly aircraft less to keep operations on time.

Even with lower utilization, Spirit still has seen weaker on time ratings over the past few years compared to pre-pandemic, which itself has costs, be it through compensation for canceled flights, cost of booking hotels for unexpected overnights, revenue lost through frustrated passengers avoiding flying the airline again, and more.