Pratt’s $10b jet engine lags GE by 10-to-1 on new orders

Pratt & Whitney’s $10b bet on a new jet engine is faltering after a troubled rollout, and buyers are rushing to a General Electric Co. model instead. The GE turbine has won 10 times as many orders this year to power a narrow-body Airbus SE plane on which the two suppliers compete head to head. Pratt has signed just one buyer in that span to supply its geared turbofan engine for the aircraft, according to data provided to Bloomberg by Flight Ascend Consultancy. The figures paint a stark picture for Pratt and parent United Technologies, which billed the so-called GTF as a technological breakthrough that was supposed to help reverse GE’s recent market dominance. Instead, weak demand for the engine is fueling doubts about the long-term payoff of Pratt’s most important product. “It reflects a concern about the engine and where it’s going to go from its rather checkered start,” said aviation consultant Robert Mann. The GTF has “had its share of teething problems and those have yet to be sorted out. And even if sorted out, it’s delaying a lot of aircraft deliveries. It gives people who made the initial choice of the GTF pause.” Customers’ decisions about engines for the Airbus A320neo are crucial, because of the one-on-one matchup with GE and the plane’s importance for airlines. Along with the Boeing 737, the single-aisle A320 family is a workhorse of the global jetliner fleet, far outnumbering the wide-bodies used on long-haul routes. The A320neo, Airbus’s latest version of the aircraft, will be flying for decades. That represents a long-term revenue stream for engine makers, which rely partly on service deals to recoup heavy initial investments.<br/>