After the imposition of sanctions, the health of the SaM-146 engine fleet for SSJ aircraft did not deteriorate

As Kommersant found out, since the imposition of sanctions, the serviceability of the SaM-146 engine fleet for SSJ aircraft has not deteriorated, despite the increase in flight hours and the cessation of support from the French Safran, which was responsible for the most difficult hot part. According to the UEC, out of 314 engines in Russian passenger airlines, 32 require repairs, that is, the serviceability level is about 90%. But the JEC is still unable to repair the hot section. The corporation promises to master it, but Kommersant’s sources in airlines doubt the feasibility of these plans and fear that part of the fleet will be shut down in a year.

As of the end of March, for the entire fleet of SaM-146 engines (314 engines for 157 aircraft), 32 units were out of order, follows from the report of UEC-Saturn (part of the Rostec United Engine Corporation), which was reviewed by Kommersant “. We are talking about engines that are used by eight Russian passenger airlines operating SSJ.

“The fleet’s current health is 90% and … corresponds to the health level as of February 24, 2022,” the report says.

Rostec and UEC declined to comment. The report was compiled in mid-April, and, as the interlocutor of Kommersant close to Rostec clarified, now “the average level of serviceability remains at the same level, the situation has not worsened.”

The SaM-146 engine was manufactured by PowerJet, a joint venture between UEC and the French Safran. However, the French stopped their participation in the JV after February 2022. Of the 32 faulty airline engines, 15 are subject to repair, ten more are in the repair fund (including for donating spare parts), and seven are “hung” abroad for repairs in France.

UEC-Saturn has 13 engines left in the Russian Federation, two of them are waiting for repairs. As Kommersant wrote, this is the so-called replacement pool of engines, from where airlines can rent them for the duration of the repair. At the time of creation in 2019, the SaM-146 pool had 17 engines, and carriers complained about their shortage (it was reported that PowerJet created a separate pool for Aeroflot). According to the report, PowerJet in Russia has 15 engines, including 13 serviceable ones. Kommersant’s sources in Aeroflot and Rossiya (received all 78 Aeroflot SSJs) deny having their own pool. “Rossiya does not use a pool of engines,” the company emphasized. “In cooperation with the UEC, a variant was chosen in which, if necessary, the engines are sent for repair, the timing suits us.”

In total, in 2022, UEC-Saturn repaired 46 SSJ engines against 29 repairs in 2021. The sources of Kommersant explain the increase in the volume of work by an increase in flying time. “At least 36 repairs” are planned for this year.

Since the end of February 2022, UEC-Saturn has processed more than 5.8 thousand requests from airlines on SaM-146, more than 1.1 thousand related to “details of the area of ​​responsibility of Safran Aircraft Engines”.

Safran was responsible for the hot end of the engine: the gas generator as part of the high pressure compressor, combustion chamber and high pressure turbine. The UEC was engaged in the “cold part”: the fan and the low pressure cascade. The report states that UEC-Saturn has received approval from the Federal Air Transport Agency to “repair the SaM-146 gas generator by replacing parts using parts dismantled from faulty donor engines.”

As several interlocutors in the industry told Kommersant, now the UEC is extending the “engine life by 1 thousand cycles”, which, according to their estimates, “will give companies actively flying SSJs – Red Wings, Azimuth and IrAero – about a year flights.” After that, according to their forecasts, problems may begin due to the hot part, which may end with a shutdown of the park (see “Kommersant” dated April 14).

For this reason, the airlines asked the UEC to take on the status of an engine developer. PowerJet acted as the holder of the type certificate: although the European regulator EASA suspended it at the request of the French side in July 2022, the document validated by Rosaviatsia is still valid. But UEC-Saturn cannot act as a type certificate holder “due to the lack of a complete package of technical data for the engine in terms of the gas generator and units in the Safran area of ​​​​responsibility,” the report says.

Kommersant’s interlocutors close to Rostec claim that, despite this, the UEC specialists are “doing their best.”

“When the result is achieved, the issue with the status of the developer will probably be resolved, it’s too early to talk about it,” emphasizes one of them. All repair documentation (including service bulletins) is issued by UEC-Saturn as an addition to the PowerJet technical documentation, which has been “frozen” since February 24.

Kommersant’s interlocutors are still not sure that the UEC will have enough financial, human and technical resources to master the repair of the hot part of the SaM-146 “due to the enormous load with the state defense order and the tight deadlines for creating PD-8.” The most pessimistic sources of Kommersant also doubt the possibility of solving the problem in the technical centers of Iran or any other friendly country: in their opinion, the engine produced exclusively for the SSJ-100 has its own specifics, and the costs will be considered stranded.

The UEC, after the departure of Safran, launched work on six “critical details” of the first priority, for which the French were responsible. So far, only the block of rocking chairs has been replaced. Serial production of fuel filters in the Russian Federation, which were previously produced by Safran, is scheduled for June. Carriers have been waiting for them since the end of August 2022. In September, the production of spark plugs in the Russian Federation (SaM-146 used spark plugs from the USA), as well as an analogue of the French air starter valves, should begin.

Aigul Abdullina