Airbus A320neo aircraft completes first flight with Pratt & Whitney's PurePower engines

Pratt & Whitney's PurePower engines have successfully powered the Airbus A320neo in its maiden flight. Airbus selected the PW1100G-JM engine to launch the A320neo aircraft family in 2011. Pratt & Whitney is a United Technologies Corp. company.

The maiden flight of the A320neo is in the air weeks ahead of schedule. The tremendous joint efforts of both Airbus and Pratt & Whitney have made this first flight possible.

"The entire Pratt & Whitney team is proud to join Airbus in writing the next chapter of aviation history with the first flight of the A320neo aircraft," said Pratt & Whitney President Paul Adams. "Today's first flight is yet another endorsement of our Geared Turbofan™ (GTF) technology. The A320neo equipped with our engine will set a new standard for narrowbody efficiency and economics. We are proud that our PurePower engine is on track to enable the A320neo to achieve best in class performance and value to our customers at entry into service."

The GTF architecture allows room for growth as demonstrated by the additional 2 percent fuel burn enhancement which will further reinforce the A320neo's 20 percent fuel burn savings before 2020.

With the first flight of the A320neo, Pratt & Whitney now has two PurePower engines powering the next generation of aircraft. Pratt & Whitney has completed 11,000 hours of testing across the PurePower engine family, including 23,000 cycles of testing.

The PW1100G-JM engine successfully completed its first development flight May 15, 2013, on Pratt & Whitney's flight test aircraft. To date, the company has successfully completed more than 26 development engine builds and three flight test campaigns to validate the PW1100G-JM engine. The first engine was tested in November 2012, less than two years after the GTF program was launched.