Pratt & Whitney Canada’s FAST (Flight Data Acquisition, Storage and Transmission) engine diagnostics and prognostics solution for regional airlines now has over 400 installations in service.
According to Frederic Lefebvre, vice-president of marketing, it also has up to 150 more on order. Speaking at the Regional Airline Association’s annual conference in Long Beach, California, Lefebvre said FAST had been certified for a number of Bombardier Commercial Aircraft regional turboprops including the Q400, and for ATR platforms including the ATR 42-600 and 72-600.
The solution captures, analyses and wirelessly sends full-flight data intelligence within minutes of a pilot shutting down an engine. The IT infrastructure supporting FAST enables P&WC to segregate the data and to send it to various departments within an airline.
On Bombardier aircraft, P&WC has 20 operators using FAST on more than 350 aircraft, including Ethiopian Airlines and Spice Jet on their Q400 fleets. On ATR aircraft, there are 10 operators with 60 aircraft, with one of the most recent being Buddha Air.
Lefebvre also highlighted P&WC’s expansion of its propeller balancing capabilities through the FAST solution. The company has put in place the capability to automate the monitoring process, which provides for significant savings in time and cost.
He said in a media briefing at RAA 2018 that a new second part of the solution would be released in the second quarter of 2019, which will tell the customer where to place the actual weights on the propeller, an advance that P&WC says represents a holistic solution that further moves towards full powerplant on-condition monitoring.
