Air Arabia & CFM Celebrate one million flight hour milestone

During a special ceremony here, Air Arabia and CFM International celebrated the achievement of one million engine flight hours with the airline’s fleet of CFM56-5B engines.

Air Arabia has been a CFM customer since it began scheduled service in 2003. Today, the airline operates a fleet of 32 CFM56-5B-powered Airbus A320 family aircraft.

All of these engines are covered by long-term service agreements with CFM, with part of the fleet covered by a time and material agreement; the aircraft delivered since 2010 are covered by a Rate per Flight Hour agreement, wherein CFM will guarantee engine maintenance costs on a dollar per engine flight hour basis.

“The success of Air Arabia’s relationship with CFM International is evidenced by our 10 year partnership, said Mr. Adel Abdullah Ali, Air Arabia’s chief executive officer. “Air Arabia enjoys a long track record of operational excellence and we remain focused on offering the best value to our customers combined with excellent operational performance. This means a world track record in utilization of our resources, including the Airbus A320 aircraft powered by the state-of the art CFM56 engines.”

In addition to achieving the one million flight hour milestone, the Air Arabia CFM56-5B engines have also been awarded TRUEngine status.

The TRUEngine designation serves as a method for identifying engines with CFM-approved content and facilitates product support of the engine system. Moreover, industry stakeholders can use the knowledge of engine content to evaluate engine value and re-marketability. The TRUEngine program is available for all CFM56 engines. To qualify, a customer submits a declared list of compliant engine serial numbers, along with engine maintenance records, to CFM for evaluation to ensure the engine content, overhaul practices, and repairs are consistent with CFM requirements for that engine model.

“We are pleased to celebrate these two tremendous milestones with Air Arabia, and the entire CFM Team extends its warmest congratulations,” said Jean-Paul Ebanga, president & CEO of CFM International. “We believe that we build the most reliable engines in the air, but we know it is the maintenance crews at our airline customers that keep them flying. The Air Arabia team has done an outstanding job maintaining these engines. The fleet has maintained a 99.98 percent departure reliability rate and has had no unplanned engine removals and no in-flight shutdowns. These statistics rank among the very best in the industry. We consider it an honor to be part of this team. “