By Ashmita Sethi
From powering India’s legendary DC-3 Parshuram aircraft post-independence, to the 1960s with Air India’s first Boeing 707 powered by P&W’s JT3D engine – Pratt & Whitney has powered India’s flight and its dreams since the very beginning. Our engines power India’s aircraft fleet across commercial, defence, regional and general aviation – delivering dependable, economical, sustainable, and fuel-efficient flying.
Indian airlines today fly one of newest aircraft fleets anywhere in the world, including more than 180 A320 neos powered by our GTF family of engines. The revolutionary GTF engine delivers 16-20 percent increased fuel efficiency, reduces NOx emissions by 50 percent and noise footprint by 75 percent.
Indian airlines, one of the first adopters of the GTF worldwide, have saved nearly $1 billion in fuel savings (580 million liters) since its entry into service. The same dependability, and efficiency is delivered by our PW100/150 family for India’s regional aviation growth under UDAN. India’s ATR and Dash-8 turboprop aircraft, mainstays for regional aviation, run on Pratt & Whitney engines.
Pratt & Whitney is proud to power the Indian Air Force’s (IAF) mission critical aircraft which includes the F117 engines on the IAF’s 11 C-17 Globemasters, and the PT6A turboprop engine on its 75 PC-7 trainers. Furthermore, Pratt & Whitney has been a key propulsion partner for the NAL-SARAS MKI with our PT6A turboprop engine. Pratt & Whitney Canada and the National Aeronautical Laboratory (NAL) have been working together for over a decade on the development of NAL’s multirole light transport aircraft, SARAS.
With the latest acquisition of the C295 transport aircraft, powered by our dependable PW127G engines, Pratt & Whitney’s ties with the IAF have been further strengthened. As the Indian Air Force looks to expand its capabilities by modernizing its aircraft, Pratt & Whitney is well-positioned to support the IAF in its transformation for the future.
Globally, Pratt & Whitney supports our customers in their ambition to achieve net zero CO2 emissions for aviation by 2050. As part of our commitment to provide greener and more sustainable air travel, the company recently announced plans to advance its hybrid-electric propulsion technology.
Our Hybrid-Electric Demonstrator on a Dash-800 will target 30 percent reduction in fuel burn and CO2 emissions, alongside supporting the quicker adoption of Sustainable Aviation Fuels (SAFs). In fact, Pratt & Whitney, with Embraer, has also successfully tested a GTF-powered E195-E2 aircraft on 100 percent SAF, demonstrating that GTF engines can fly with blends of up to 100 percent SAF without any compromise to performance.
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Pratt & Whitney is also fully committed to support the Government’s vision of Atmanirbhar Bharat and its key initiatives like Make in India, Skill India and Start-up India. Apart from working on indigenous platforms like the NAL-SARAS MKI or the Netra, we have also significantly invested in strengthening the country’s aerospace ecosystem.
The prime example of it is our Customer Training Center (CTC) in Hyderabad, that provides specialized training on our engines to customers from over 20 nationalities. Moreover, in just last 6 months, the company has announced the establishment of a world-class India Capabilities Center (ICC) focused on our global supply chain operations and India Engineering Center (IEC) in Bengaluru, which will commence operations in January 2023, while it also continues to maintain an R&D presence through the Center of Excellence (COE) at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bengaluru.
As the company has demonstrated its commitment towards developing India’s overall aerospace ecosystem, Pratt & Whitney is committed to supporting India’s aerospace evolution through the regional connectivity scheme, UDAN, the future IAF fleets powered by P&W engines, increased in-country investments, R&D, supply chain and industry collaboration.
Author is President and Country Head, Pratt & Whitney.
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