New Engines Save Fuel but Drain Airline Budgets, IATA Warns

Airlines bought engines that burn up to 20% less fuel. Now groundings, long repair queues and soaring lease rates are eating those savings, while engine makers’ valuations soar.

Airline leaders and the International Air Transport Association warn that the fuel-efficient engines airlines bought are coming off the wing sooner than expected, stranding hundreds of jets and driving up maintenance bills.

The newest engines burn up to 20% less fuel than the models they replaced. But metal defects and heat damage are forcing early removals, and supply chain disruptions cost carriers more than $11 billion in 2025, according to IATA estimates, even as engine makers report strong financial results.

The problems span the industry’s three flagship programs: the CFM International LEAP, the Pratt & Whitney Geared Turbofan, or GTF, and the Rolls-Royce Trent 1000. Each delivered major fuel savings. Each has also run into durability shortfalls that a strained maintenance, repair and overhaul, or MRO, network has struggled to absorb.

Fuel Savings Offset by Groundings and Repair Bills

IATA projects that global airline net profits will fall from $45 billion in 2025 to $23 billion in 2026, with net margins narrowing from 4.2% to 2.0%. IATA attributes that decline mainly to disruptions from the war in the Middle East and a roughly 70% jump in jet fuel prices.

Supply chain problems add to the strain. The largest share of the more than $11 billion in extra costs IATA estimated for 2025, $4.2 billion, came from delayed fuel savings, as airlines kept older, less efficient jets flying while waiting for late deliveries.

Keeping those aging fleets in service added $3.1 billion in maintenance costs. Leasing extra engines while others sat in repair shops cost another $2.6 billion, and stockpiling spare parts to guard against unpredictable supply added $1.4 billion.

Engine Makers Thrive as Airline Margins Shrink

Manufacturers, meanwhile, have benefited from rising defense budgets and from aftermarket parts and repairs, which IATA says now generate a larger share of their profits than new-engine sales. Rolls-Royce’s market value has climbed to about £121 billion (roughly $160 billion) this month from a low of roughly $7.5 billion in mid-2022. GE Aerospace, which owns half of CFM International in a joint venture with France’s Safran, had a market value of about $336 billion as of Sept. 11.

That gap spilled into public view at IATA’s annual meeting in Rio de Janeiro in June, where airline chiefs openly criticized engine makers.

LATAM Brasil CEO Jerome Cadier told Reuters: “Obviously there is dissatisfaction, and the way to measure that dissatisfaction is how many aircraft I have grounded today.”

IATA Director General Willie Walsh said of the engine manufacturers: “They’ve done extremely well at a time of major disruption for the airlines. And I think that paradox really does need to be called out.”

United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby, whose airline is in a legal dispute with Rolls-Royce over an engine maintenance contract tied to its long-delayed order for 45 Airbus A350s, praised GE and Pratt & Whitney but singled out one supplier. “The truth is the only one that I sort of have in my doghouse is Rolls,” Kirby said. Rolls-Royce has denied breaching the contract. RTX and GE Aerospace told Reuters they are investing heavily to expand engine repair and production capacity, and RTX said it is working to improve the GTF’s durability. GE Aerospace CEO Larry Culp has defended the industry’s pricing, saying it reflects the investment needed to develop and support complex engines. Rolls-Royce was not immediately available for comment, Reuters reported.

Pratt & Whitney executives have said at industry events that they aim to reduce A320neo family groundings to single digits by the end of 2026, a commitment first made in November 2025.

Why Fuel-Efficient Engines Are Wearing Out Early

No single flaw explains the crisis. To reach double-digit fuel savings, modern engines run hotter and at higher internal pressures, which speeds wear on hot-section parts and exposes weak points in advanced manufacturing methods.

Pratt & Whitney’s GTF uses a reduction gearbox that lets the fan and low-pressure turbine each spin at their optimal speeds. The program stumbled when microscopic contamination in the powder metal used to forge critical disks shortened the fatigue life of high-pressure compressor and turbine hubs, raising the risk of uncontained failures.

Parent company RTX took a $2.9 billion pretax charge in the third quarter of 2023, mainly for expected customer compensation and added maintenance costs. An IATA study on engine maintenance bottlenecks found that grounded GTF-powered aircraft peaked at 648 in March 2025, or 28% of the global GTF fleet.

The Federal Aviation Administration’s Airworthiness Directive 2024-05-11 requires ultrasonic inspections of first- and second-stage high-pressure turbine hubs before they reach 3,800 or 2,800 cycles, depending on engine model, and of seventh- and eighth-stage compressor rotors at the next compressor shop visit. A cycle is one takeoff and landing.

The powder metal problem reaches beyond the GTF. In January 2026, the FAA finalized a directive for General Electric GE90 engines, a mainstay of the Boeing 777 fleet, over iron contamination that could cause uncontained failures. Operators must replace affected first-stage high-pressure turbine disks before they reach 4,650 cycles, at an FAA-estimated cost of $932,816 per engine, nearly all of it for parts. The FAA said the order affects two engines on U.S.-registered planes, and the manufacturer reported no failures tied to the contamination.

Widebody operators flying the Boeing 787 and Airbus A350 in hot, harsh environments face a different threat: ingested sand, volcanic ash and industrial dust. The particles melt inside turbines where gas temperatures exceed 2,900 degrees Fahrenheit (1,600 degrees Celsius), seep into protective ceramic coatings and cause them to flake off, leaving the blade metal exposed to oxidation, melting and cracking.

The Trent 1000 has struggled with turbine blade wear. A European Union Aviation Safety Agency directive requires repeated borescope inspections of its high-pressure turbine blades and pulls an engine from service before its next flight if leading-edge cracks exceed 4 millimeters (0.16 inch).

The LEAP has largely avoided fleetwide groundings but not early wear. CFM had shipped more than 1,200 LEAP-1A turbine durability kits by late 2025 and installed reverse bleed systems on nearly half the fleet.

Owning the new engines costs more. By industry estimates, typical maintenance runs $350 to $600 per flight hour for the LEAP and $400 to $700 for the GTF, compared with $180 to $350 for the older CFM56. A GTF performance restoration shop visit can, by some industry estimates, top $5 million.

Repair Shops Swamped as Lease Rates Climb

Before the pandemic, a standard engine shop visit took about 60 days. Shortages of forgings, castings, skilled labor and test cells stretched some GTF visits to most of a year at the 2024-2025 peak, according to industry estimates.

Unscheduled removals compound the cost. When an engine comes off the wing before its life-limited parts are used up, the remaining life is stranded and the maintenance bill arrives early.

With spare engines scarce, monthly lease rates for the LEAP-1A26 rose, according to aviation consultancy IBA, from $110,000 in 2023 to more than $125,000 in 2024. Rates for the older CFM56-7B jumped from $75,000 in 2019 to $100,000 in 2024 as airlines delayed retirements.

IATA expects the strain to worsen as new fleets grow. It projects annual LEAP shop visits will grow from 600 to 800 in 2025 to more than 5,000 by 2040, while GTF visits double from 1,000 to more than 2,000.

Manufacturers Roll Out Fixes, Open Repair Market

IATA has pushed to loosen manufacturers’ grip on aftermarket work. In January 2026, it renewed an agreement with CFM that guarantees independent repair shops fair access to technical manuals.

Under the deal, CFM also recognizes regulator-approved alternatives, including Parts Manufacturer Approval replacement parts and repairs by FAA-designated engineering representatives.

Pratt & Whitney’s answer is the GTF Advantage, which the FAA certified in February 2025. EASA validated the engine in October 2025 and certified it for the A320neo family in April 2026. Pratt & Whitney says the engine, due to enter service this year, will deliver 4% more takeoff thrust at sea level and 8% more at high altitudes, and Pratt & Whitney says its redesigned hot section offers up to double the current time on wing.

For engines already flying, the company is readying a Hot Section Plus retrofit of about 35 redesigned parts, to be installed during routine shop visits, that it says will deliver 90% to 95% of the new engine’s durability gains. Pratt & Whitney expects certification in late 2026 or early 2027.

Rolls-Royce says the Trent 1000 XE’s redesigned high-pressure turbine blade, which boosts cooling airflow by 40%, offers up to triple the time on wing of its predecessor. LATAM, hit hard by early Trent 1000 groundings, has committed to the XE for new 787 deliveries.

GE Aerospace this month signed an agreement to acquire Consolidated Precision Products for $11.75 billion to bring critical casting supply in-house. The company expects the deal to close in the second half of 2027.

The squeeze runs deeper than engineering. The industry lost manufacturing capacity and skilled workers during the COVID-19 pandemic, and many technicians are nearing retirement. New hires typically need two to three years to reach full productivity.

Airlines also compete with defense and business aviation for the same castings, forgings, titanium and aluminum. Defense buyers often accept higher prices and shorter terms, leaving commercial operators waiting longer for parts and repairs.