Mr. Reliable: How Tech Advances Fueled the GEnx Aircraft Engine’s 2 Million Flight Hours in South Asia

This September, barely a dozen years since the engine first began to be utilized in South Asia, the GEnx engine celebrated 2 million flight hours in the region — a milestone that reflects both the robust technology at work in the engine and its dramatic evolution since then. It also suggests a virtuous cycle, in which the mass adoption of GEnx engine–powered Boeing 787 Dreamliners that have made long-range flight more accessible to millions of people in the region also drove GE Aerospace to improve the reliability and efficiency of the GEnx engine, truly making it an engine of change.

In the bigger picture, this change couldn’t be much more noticeable. Before the first GEnx engine was delivered in 2012, India had fewer widebody jets in the country, Air India was government-owned, and aviation was still a relatively local affair. “Without a widebody, you couldn’t fly to Europe or America without stopping first in Dubai,” explains Vikram Rai, CEO of South Asia for GE Aerospace. After an initial delivery of 27 new GEnx engine–powered 787 Dreamliners to Air India, GE Aerospace quickly took a leading role in the region, as the GEnx engine set a new standard of reliability. 

“That’s actually what defines the product — how reliable it is,” says Ravi Kanth, senior services manager of Commercial Engines and Services (CES) at GE Aerospace. “It has a world-class 99.98% on-time departure rate. And the improvements we’ve brought in the past decade have tremendously improved the engine’s time on wing, which enables airlines to plan and serve their customers better.” 

What Makes the GE Aerospace's GEnx Engine So Reliable

To hit these industry benchmarks, engineering leaders like Bappadittya Jana, senior engineering manager of the hot section of the GEnx engine — the part of the engine that includes the combustor, turbine, and exhaust components — highlighted two essential areas of the engine’s function: increasing time on wing and reducing unscheduled engine removals. “To improve in these areas, we either redesigned the hardware, introduced a new design, or deployed new technology,” Jana says. 

To meet the first challenge, researchers and engineers at GE Aerospace’s Bengaluru technology center worked with regional customers to improve performance and durability beyond the engine’s already high standards, since the severe engine operations, or SEO, of South Asia’s climate impose their own demands.

“To take off at 40 to 50 degrees centigrade [104–122 Fahrenheit], the engine’s durability must be much more robust than it would need to be in, say, North America or Canada,” says Jana. “And dust that gathers inside the extremely hot combustor and turbine area often melts, sticking to the components’ surface and deteriorating the engines.” 

In 2021, GE Aerospace engineers redesigned the stage 1 high-pressure turbine (HPT) blade to extend its lifespan. They also developed a coating technology for the combustor to improve its durability, especially in a hot and dusty environment. On top of that, the company introduced GE Aerospace’s 360 Foam Wash, an advanced cleaning process that removes dirt and debris. “Together, these brought a significant reduction in unscheduled engine removals and extended the time between maintenance cycles,” says Jana. “The success of the HPT blade is very promising, and it will continue to extend our average time on wing, especially in the severe engine operation conditions of the Southeast Asia region.” 

To increase the predictability of an engine’s removal, they enhanced the analytics-based maintenance (ABM) that integrates flight data to pinpoint future issues. “As the engine is flying, we get a constant stream of flight information — the altitude, rotor speeds, as well as inlet and exit temperatures — which we integrate with physics so that our model predicts when a specific engine needs to be serviced.” 

The GEnx engine now spends four times longer on wing than its competitors’ engines, an achievement that executives like Kanth credit in part to GE Aerospace’s embrace of artificial intelligence — both for data-based insights and technology like the AI-enabled Blade Inspection Tool, which is used to inspect the stage 1 and stage 2 high-pressure turbine blades in a GEnx engine. “These and the other improvements we’ve brought in recent years enable the airlines to plan reliable flights, on time, to serve their customers better,” Kanth says.

“GE Aerospace has been a trusted partner in our journey towards expanding our widebody operations, and the GEnx engine has consistently delivered in terms of reliability, efficiency, and sustainability,” says Nipun Aggarwal, chief commercial officer at Air India. “As we continue to grow our fleet, we are confident that the GEnx engine will play a critical role in helping us achieve our operational goals.”

The GEnx Engine’s Role in Sustainability

After Air India’s initial success with the GEnx engine, other airlines quickly followed suit. “Vistara and Biman Bangladesh each ordered a fleet of 787s,” Rai reports. And when Vistara’s Singapore-based co-owner, Tata, absorbed Air India from the Indian government, it became the first Singaporean entity to choose GEnx engine–equipped 787s over jets powered by competitors’ engines. “Which speaks to the technical, technological, and reliability advantage that GEnx engine has,” Rai says. 

Today, 90 GEnx engines power Air India, Vistara, and Biman Bangladesh flights, and Boeing estimates that it could take approximately 380 widebody jets to serve India and South Asia in the future. With this kind of surge in overseas travel, it’s worth emphasizing the GEnx engine’s important role in sustainability. 

“As a company, GE Aerospace is of course focused on minimizing carbon emissions,” says Rai. “And the GEnx engine is the most efficient, best-in-class engine in terms of this. It uses 15% less fuel than its predecessor, the CF6-80C2, and generates 15% lower emissions.” Since the GEnx engine, like all GE Aerospace engines, can operate on approved sustainable aviation fuel blends, it is well positioned for when airlines make the switch to less carbon-intensive fuel.

Kanth marvels at how much ground this engine has covered so quickly. “What amazes me about the GEnx engine is how it has matured over the years,” he says. “We’re so confident about how the engine will perform, and our operational planning is unparalleled. These fleets were never this stable. It’s a very proud moment for all of us.”

While 2 million flight hours may be a fraction of the almost 60 million hours the GEnx engine line has flown globally, the ratio may soon change. Air India plans to order another 20 widebody aircraft powered by GEnx engines in early 2025. And Rai predicts it will hit the next milestone in much less time than it took to reach 2 million. “The next 1 million might be in months,” he says. “Five million might come sooner than anyone expects.”