They Rent Engines?

Oh, bummer! The left engine on your prized business jet swallowed a piece of FOD (foreign object debris) that was sitting on the taxiway just as the pilot advanced the power after taking a turn. The increased power sucked that FOD right into the engine and it nicked a few fabulously expensive blades on its way through. The maintenance shop did a borescope inspection (yes, it’s like a medical fiberscope) and the engine needs major work, so your airplane is grounded.

Or is it?

Turbine engines are a huge part of the overall cost of aircraft, running in the millions of dollars, depending on the size. Basically, it’s a bunch of super-expensive, hard-to-make parts spinning at tens of thousands of revolutions per minute, with extremely tight tolerances required to be able to generate power, and baking at red-hot temperatures. Everything inside that engine needs to be in top shape for it to make your jet go.

So when the engine is broken, it’s going to take some time and money to put it back together again. But what if you would rather keep flying while your airplane is grounded? You could charter another airplane, at 2 to 3X the cost of running your own airplane. 

Or you could rent an engine.

There is a surprisingly huge demand for rental turbine engines, due to those that run into problems and need work, or to keep an airplane flying while its engines are getting overhauled. The value of turbine engines is so high that a market was created that makes it worthwhile for companies to stockpile engines and rent them out when they are needed.

Changing an engine isn’t a simple task, but the maintenance providers certainly know how to do this efficiently. They also have to make sure to keep great records of which engine is where and how many hours and cycles (start-stop events) it logs, as well as how it’s performing. Luckily, this isn’t hard to monitor with today’s sophisticated engine data gathering systems that come with newer aircraft. 

If you deal with any of the major maintenance providers, they’ll have a stock of rental engines on hand. Often, they’ll buy older airplanes, sell all the good parts, and keep the engine for their rental pools. Most engine manufacturers have rental pools too, as do independent companies such as JSSI and EAP. The latter two offer non-manufacturer maintenance programs, so-called power-by-the-hour contracts that cover engine and airframe maintenance in exchange for a per-flight-hour fee. If one of the engines that they cover has a problem, it’s in their best interest to have a rental engine on hand to keep their customer flying.

How much do rental turbine engines cost? A typical Honeywell engine on a Learjet is a good example, costing about $1,200 to $1,300 per flight hour, with a minimum of $8,130. If you own a Challenger 300 powered by a Honeywell HTF engine, that’s going to run you more than $2,000 per hour with a minimum charge of $15,000. 

Owing a jet isn’t for the faint of pocket, but at least the industry has figured out how to keep them flying.