Flight Friday: The Up & Down Impact Of The GTF On Fleets’ ‘Ground Days’

Shortly after the 2023 Paris Air Show, Pratt & Whitney revealed issues with tainted powder metal in some parts of its PW1000G geared turbofan (GTF) engines, which were in addition to previously disclosed durability issues for the powerplant’s heat exchanger.

This week’s Flight Friday looks at the subsequent impact on aircraft powered by the GTF.

The analysis looks at the number of “ground days” that the fleets have had. This does not directly correlate with aircraft on the ground without engines, as some of these aircraft could legitimately be undergoing maintenance, repair, and overhaul (MRO), or simply be a function of airline operations. However, at a high level, the trends still follow suit.

In the six months after Pratt’s announcement, the number of “ground days” as a percentage crept up from around 20%; for Airbus A320neo family aircraft, they were up to 40%. Then, there was a plateau where the percentage fluctuated around the 38% mark. In 2025, the A320neo family trend has once again begun to drop, as Pratt works through the engine issues and gets them back to operators for the northern hemisphere summer season.

The Airbus A220 has also been impacted by GTF issues, but not at such an extreme level. Again, “ground days” began to rise, and large operators of the A220s like airBaltic certainly voiced disappointment in the availability of engines, and therefore aircraft. Over the first half of 2025, we have again witnessed the progress Pratt is making in returning engines to operators to get them back in the air, and the A220 currently has the “best” rate.

The Embraer E2 family has also been affected. However, their profile is slightly different, with a slowly increasing “ground days” trend through the end of 2024, then a strong downward trend starting at the beginning of 2025.

The average outcome is a positive trend to fewer “ground days” as Pratt chugs its way through the backlog of engines. With the arrival of the GTF Advantage, which will start rolling off the production line in 2026, the impact of the durability issues and the powder metal issue will hopefully be a thing of the past.

This data was put together using Aviation Week’s Tracked Aircraft Utilization database.