Lufthansa Technik has developed a new product for optimal care of older engine types through to their end of life in flight operations. smart.life sets out to minimize the increased overhead requirement of aircraft engines, which experience shows occurs at their end of life, by taking advantage of various product components and synergy effects in maintenance.
„Engine repairs and overhauls are essentially approached in a different way with smart.life in the second half of their life cycle,” says Bernhard Krüger-Sprengel, Senior Vice President Engine Services of Lufthansa Technik. „Instead of a traditional overhaul, we follow the approach with smart.life of delivering thrust during this phase of the product life cycle – with the aim of making optimal use of an engine’s, modules or engine parts remaining life span.”
smart.life includes various technical and commercial elements: On one hand, this includes creating an individual workscoping for every engine as well as producing a reliable engine from two defective engines. Added to this are leasing models as well as the purchase of customer engines and immediate lease-back as well as pooling of the customer’s own spare engines.
Combining the existing opportunities in an optimized and tailored manner should allow synergy effects to be achieved and therefore savings to be generated for the customer. The respective customer situation, the fleet size, the required remaining life span and legal requirements are all considered in this context.
The need for more flexible management of engine maintenance for older engine types is also being driven by the current market situation. Various engine types are set to reach the end of their product life cycle in the short to medium term. The GE CF6-80, Pratt & Whitney PW4000, as well as the CFM56-5A/-5C from CFMI are initially in the new product’s focus. However, all engines that are entering the second half of their life cycle will be ultimately addressed in the long term by smart.life.
Source / Author: Lufthansa Technik