Pratt & Whitney Canada has reached another milestone, producing their 100,000th engine. Of those 100,000 engines, more than 60,000 remain in service with 12,300 operators in more than 200 countries. More than 750 million hours have been flown with P&WC engines.
A strong element of this success has been a commitment to R&D and innovation in technology to continually improve their engine families. Pratt & Whitney Canada has been a leader in R&D investment among Canadian companies. That innovation is continuing as the company has begun developing an advanced technology PTX engine, the future replacement for the venerable PT6 family, which accounts for more than half of the total engines delivered to date.
The company has developed 14 different engine families that serve the business turboprop, regional turboprop, helicopter, light business jets, and large business jets, and auxiliary power units.
Innovation is a key to P&WC’s success. The PT6A family has powered 128 different aircraft and is the only engine to achieve single-engine IFR status for revenue passenger activity in North America, Europe and Australia.
P&WC’s PW100/150 family of engines have led the regional turboprop market for more than 30 years.
The company pioneered the light business jet market with the JT15D that powered the first Cessna Citation, and redefined it with the PW500 engine family powering newer models today. The PW300 serves the mid- and large-sized business jet market and introduced full authority digital engine control (FADEC) technology to the business jet market. The PurePower PW800 series, which powers the G500 and G600 long-range and ultra-long-range business jets is based on the advanced core technology shared with the extremely efficient PW geared turbofan commercial engines.
Helicopters have been powered by the PT6T Twin Pac, PT6B, PT6C and the PW200/210 family of engines. The PW901 series of APUs also equip a variety of commercial aircraft.
Technological innovation that leads to industry leading reliability has been that hallmark of Pratt & Whitney Canada since its founding in 1928. Today, as the company celebrates its 100,000th engine, they are looking forward to new innovations that will maintain their market leadership in key market segments. It will interesting to watch what comes next.
