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GE Aviation, Record
Year For LEAP Engines Drive’s Jobs Expansion By Shane Nolan |
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February 25, 2012 - Last week, as part of its four-day
summit in Washington, DC, focused on U.S. manufacturing,
jobs and trade, GE announced it will invest $580 million
in aviation manufacturing and research and development
in the U.S.
Three new aviation plants are under construction right
now and slated to open in 2013, in Ellisville,
Mississippi, Auburn, Alabama and Dayton Ohio, and GE
Aviation will add more than 400 new manufacturing jobs.
That expansion has been driven in part by an
unprecedented boom in orders and commitments for jet
engines, especially the new emissions-reducing LEAP
engine. In 2011, orders of the LEAP totaled more than
3,000 units at CFM International, the 50/50 joint
company of France’s Snecma and GE Aviation. |
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Together
with orders for their popular CFM56 engines, orders and
commitments at CFM totaled a record 4,556 in 2011, a figure
three times their current yearly output. Orders and commitments
came in from companies around the globe, including AirAsia,
Garuda, Air China, SAS, Virgin America, American Airlines,
Southwest Airlines and Lion Air.
The
GE-built portion of the LEAP and the CFM56 engines are fully
assembled in the US, with participation from facilities across
the country, including Asheville, NC; Peebles, OH; Hooksett, NH;
and Victorville, CA. The LEAP engines are on schedule to enter
service in 2016, and as production comes online and expands, GE
expects to hire hundreds more in the US.
LEAP
engines bring the efficiency found in larger, wide-body
long-haul engines to the single-aisle short-haul market where
durability is paramount. With today’s flight schedules, a 150 –
200 passenger plane might see eight to ten takeoffs and landings
in a single day, which puts roughly an order of magnitude more
wear and tear on the engines than in the case of long-haul
wide-body equipment that makes one or two takeoffs and landings
per day.
The LEAP is a high-bypass turbofan engine with an innovative
composite fan blade design that increases strength while
reducing weight, along with advanced aerodynamic designs and
state-of-the-art combustor technology. That combination is
part of what gives the ecomagination-qualified LEAP as much
as 15% higher fuel efficiency and a corresponding drop in
emissions, while keeping maintenance costs down.
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