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“While the airline industry is in a bad health,
GE perceives India as an exciting market and we
remain committed to it. We are looking forward
to expand our growth and penetration in the market.
Ours is a two fold strategy ---- grow ourselves
and help customers to make more money. We also
aim at helping airlines to make operations more
reliable, efficient and cost effective. Currently
majority of the firm’s revenues from India come
from the civil sector with good growth expected
from the defence segment in future. The defence
business is presently more at the orders stage,
while the civil business is at the delivery stage.
We expect this proportion to change as defence
deliveries start kicking in,” said Nalin Jain,
President, GE Aviation, India in an exclusive
interview to India Strategic.
Air India’s 27 Boeing 787 Dreamliner aircraft
will be powered by GE’s GEnx engines. Based on
the proven GE90 architecture, the GEnx engine
will offer up to 15 percent improved fuel efficiency,
which translates to up to 15 percent less CO2.
GE plans to set up an engine maintenance plant
for its GEnx and the GE90 engines. The engine
facility will be located at Nagpur in Maharashtra,
near Boeing’s planned airframe maintenance, repair
and overhaul plant, and will start operations
in 2013-14.
“The engine’s innovative low emission combustor
dramatically reduces gases as much as 55 percent
below today’s regulatory limits and other regulated
gases as much as 90 percent. The GEnx is also
the quietest engine GE has produced due to the
large, more efficient fan blades that operate
at slower tip speed, resulting in about 30 percent
lower noise levels. Finally, the GEnx is the world’s
only jet engine with both a front fan case and
fan blades made of carbon fiber composites. Operators
have responded well to the GEnx engine with about
1,300 GEnx engines ordered for 46 customers around
the world,” informed Jain.
He added that the company aims to deliver 300
engines to Indian carriers in four to five years,
with 60 to 80 of those expected to be handed over
in 2012. The company delivered a similar number
of engines to Indian carriers last year.
Air India has also signed a GE Branded Services
Agreement under which GE Aviation will provide
technical support as Air India offers maintenance,
repair and overhaul services for GEnx-1B engine
and further advances its plans to become a global
MRO service provider. Air India will be licensed
to perform maintenance and overhaul work on the
GEnx-1B engine and provide other GEnx customers
with MRO services. Air India is also the launch
customer for the GEnx TRUEngines program, which
means the carrier will follow GE-issued engine
manuals, services bulletins and other maintenance
recommendations.
Jain further added, ”it appears to us that one
of the ways in which India could improve air traffic
management is to seek new technology that will
enable India to handle the expected rise in air
travellers. If we don’t address the ageing air
traffic management system, India could face some
challenges. The existing air traffic management
system is safe but from an efficiency standpoint,
there is room for improvement. India is currently
making the historic shift from a ground-based
navigation system to a satellite-based operation.
The aviation industry is growing fast, which creates
many logistical challenges. A small delay can
throw off a schedule and create a series of problems
for both the airlines and the travellers.”
“Think of aircraft like human bodies. Advances
in healthcare have helped us to spot and learn
from illnesses that slow us down. Now imagine
what this kind of thinking could do for the “health”
of an aircraft. With GE’s Integrated Vehicle Health
Management (IVHM), operators can detect issues
on their planes wherever they fly in the world,
analyze the data, suggest a solution and take
proactive action to prevent any issue. And with
Engine Diagnostics, airlines can also monitor
engines through takeoff and cruise records, allowing
them to analyze and learn from that data. The
result? Fewer delays, fewer missed connections
and less money spent on maintenance (or visits
to the doctor),” he explained.
GE Aviation Systems ’Integrated Vehicle Health
Management(IVHM) solution acts as a virtual proactive
maintenance team, determining the status of the
aircraft and its sub systems to supply realtime,
actionable information to help aircraft operators
predict failures before they occur and provide
a quick and accurate “whole plane” view of health.
It is an end-to end solution for collecting, analyzing
and producing actionable information. With IVHM,
you can detect a problem and see exactly where
it has occurred in an easily accessible, accurate
and concise manner. GE’s advanced prognostics
will help you anticipate problems before they
occur, preventing delays and other unplanned events–which
may lead to unscheduled maintenance.
It uses an artificial lintelligence based technology
that can learn from the data, enabling increased
fault detection and prognostics. The recent addition
of artificial intelligence based detection technology
to GE’s Health & Usage Monitoring Systems(HUMS)through
a secure web service has brought one of the most
significant improvements in rotorcraft safety
management–halving the number of undetected faults
compared to existing systems.
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