AirAsia relies on CFM agreement to rebuild the fleet

At a time when various airlines are voicing concerns over the effects on their 2024 schedules of the latest Pratt & Whitney Geared Turbofan issues, AirAsia is spreading a different message. The airline is confident that it will be able to fully reactivate and reliably operate 204 aircraft by the end of the year, thanks to the recent renewal of an agreement with CFM International for LEAP-1A-engines. AirAsia relies on CFM agreement to rebuild the fleet. In a media statement released today, AirAsia Philippines said that it is “looking at a solid salvo to 2024”, as the new CFM agreement will allow the carrier to double its fleet next year. This follows a week after the Malaysian parent airline AirAsia announced the renewed contract, which will see CFM offer improved fleet stability and monitoring of the LEAP engines. “CFM’s focus on improving fleet stability on site and 24/7 virtual monitoring of AirAsia’s LEAP-1A engine operation provides a crucial catalyst for AirAsia to reinstate its full fleet across the Group. This support is crucial to AirAsia Philippines especially since the airline plans to double its fleet count in 2024 to support its planned expansion to 45 domestic and internal routes,” AirAsia said in today's release. Mixed CFM fleet AirAsia operates a mixed Airbus A320ceo/A320neo family fleet with CFM 56-5B and LEAP-1A engines. According to Planespotters, AirAsia Malaysia has a fleet of 65 A320ceo’s and one A321ceo, of which seventeen are parked or in maintenance. There are also 39 A320neo’s and four A321neo’s in the fleet, but eleven A320neo’s are parked, with four of them in maintenance. AirAsia Philippines has 25 A321ceo’s, of which thirteen were parked, including six that are in maintenance. Thai Air Asia has 41 A320ceo’s, of which four are parked, and ten A320neo’s, with one aircraft parked for maintenance. It also has two A321neo’s. AirAsia Indonesia has 29 A320ceo’s. In a fleet update shared last week, AirAsia CEO Tony Fernandes said that the airline group has brought 175 aircraft back to service but plans to grow this to 204 in December. This includes 180 aircraft in active service and twenty on stand-by. “We have made enormous strides in bringing back our planes and restarting our operations, balancing a mismatch of cost of 204 planes and revenue of flying 143 planes on average this year. Today, we have brought back 175 planes. CFM’s fleet stability support brings a vital catalyst for us to return to full activation.” The group plans to grow the fleet to beyond 300 aircraft within the next five years, including narrowbodies and widebody Airbus A330neo aircraft. AirAsia Philippines said today that it wants to double the fleet size next year, which would mean a growth from 25 to fifty aircraft. According to Airbus data, AirAsia has 366 A321neo’s on order and has taken delivery of just four. AirAsia X plans to induct twenty A321neo’s in the coming years, plus fifteen A330-900s. The carrier canceled an order for 63 Airbus A330-900s in March 2022, but recent media reports say that AirAsia X is keen to place a new widebody order now that air travel is recovering. LEAP suffers from durability issues too That AirAsia has issued two media statements in a single week about the renewed agreement with CFM tells you something about its importance and how keen both parties are to make sure that engines are not an issue. But the LEAP has also suffered from durability issues, although it isn’t known to what extent AirAsia has suffered from them. CFM said during a pre-Paris Airshow media briefing that these durability issues are affecting high-pressure turbine (HPT) blades and fuel nozzles, especially in hot and humid environments. This is exactly the environment in Southeast Asia that AirAsia is operating in. Executive Vice President Karl Sheldon said that CFM is investing a lot of time and effort into part updates, which should become available on new engines in the second half of 2024 and as a retrofit shortly after that. “Designing, testing, and validating the durability of the blade through our dust testing and the analytics that we have been maturing for years. The goal is to get the core durability to the same state that the CFM56 is today, that is the customer baseline for expectations in that region. That is what these new blades and nozzle will do,” said Sheldon in June. CFM said in July that a quality issue with contaminated powder metal had been identified on the LEAP-1A in June 2022 in some HPT rotor disks. This was later extended to forward outer seals and high-pressure compressor (HPC) Stage 6-10 spools (compressor rotor stages 6-10 spools). In July, iron inclusion was also found in parts of the LEAP-1B that powers the Boeing MAX. The issue will require accelerated inspections and replacement of parts, but Safran President Olivier Andries said during the Q2 earnings call that the impact would be limited. CFM is offering spare engines to affected customers. Long relationship AirAsia and CFM have a long relationship. As CFM President and CEO Gaël Méheust said: “AirAsia has been a valuable CFM customer for nearly two decades and we are delighted to support them and their plans to fully reactivate their fleet. We take AirAsia’s trust as a great responsibility to keep supporting their fleet with the high-level CFM standards.” At the 2019 Paris Airshow, AirAsia placed an order for 200 LEAP-1As for 100 A321neo’s that were ordered three years earlier at the 2016 Farnborough Airshow. The agreement also included a twenty-year Rate-Per-Flying-Hour for 808 LEAPs with CFM Services. At the time, the $23.1 billion deal was the biggest in aviation history by value. AirAsia placed its first LEAP order in June 2011 for 400 engines. The first A320neo was delivered in September 2016.

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