Ben Smith confirms: KLM Cityhopper E2s had a “unique smell”

Air France-KLM Group CEO Ben Smith has confirmed that the Embraer E195-E2s of KLM Cityhopper were not only grounded because of durability issues with the Pratt & Whitney Geared Turbofans but also because of a “unique smell.” This confirms reports AirInsight heard back in June, which stated that the grounding had nothing to do with the GTF issues. Smith made his remark on Thursday when answering questions during the group’s Investor Day in Paris. An analyst asked the Air France-KLM management about the operational performance of the Airbus A220s and Embraer E2 with the GTF engines. The powerplants have suffered from various durability issues, while in July, production issues surfaced with contaminated powder metal. Commenting specifically on the E195-E2s with KLM Cityhopper, KLM CEO Marjan Rintel said: “We had some start-up problems with the Embraer, the engines of the Embraer. But we have modifications in place, we are introducing them this week and next week. We are very hopeful that this will solve the problem.” Senior Vice President for Strategy and Fleet, Angus Clarke, added: “We had a smell issue.” Ben Smith confirmed this: “We had a unique smell. Our crew wasn’t comfortable with that. Anyway, that has been solved inside the cabin with filters.” Specific issue In May, Cityhopper had grounded seven out of 15 E195-E2s in the fleet, with three aircraft out of service for over five months. Embraer President and CEO of Commercial Aviation, Arjan Meijer, told AirInsight in May that the reason that Cityhopper was grounding so many E2s at the time was specific to the airline. “We see an issue on the KLM fleet that we don’t see elsewhere across the E2 fleet. We and KLM are very busy with that.” He was unwilling to share more details. At the Paris Airshow in June, AirInsight was told by two sources with knowledge of the matter that Cityhopper was grounding aircraft because of a smell issue. “It is an unspecified smell, not really oily. It isn’t said that it is coming from the engines, although that is likely. It could be anything and maybe coming from the galley.” Pratt & Whitney’s official statement said that the main reason for Cityhopper to ground the E2s was because of a lack of spare engines to swap. “The reason KLM is seeing more operational impacts is because of the supply chain constraints affecting the availability of spare engines.” The E2 uses the PW1900G of the Geared Turbofan. But a spokesperson also said: “KLM, Embraer, and P&W are working together to identify the cause of reported issues and implement solutions.” This was an indication that there was more to it. KLM only said that they were still investigating. All 18 E2s seem back in service today, except for two that are in for regular maintenance. Economic performance is ok Angus Clarke said today that the economic performance of the E195-E2s at Cityhopper and Airbus A220s at Air France is at the highest levels of margins. “It is a huge success in terms of fuel burn, maintenance costs, and economic efficiency. The real thing you ask is: what are we doing about the engines? The reality is we have really solid contracts with Pratt & Whitney in terms of pricing protection on the engines. They are rock-solid in terms of protecting us.” “We are not fully experiencing it because of a variety of good reasons, but Pratt is short on spare engines. They are in breach of the contract. The benefit we have is a delivery stream of new aircraft. We are appropriately compensated for aircraft that we can park on the ground and use the engines. The only thing we have to do right is train our pilots in the right sequence, to keep the A220s around long enough, so we can cope with the delivery stream. In terms of the economic impact, it is really quite small,” said Clark. He added that the durability and production quality issue might take another two years to overcome.

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