The Pratt & Whitney PW1000G family, also marketed as the Pratt & Whitney GTF (geared turbofan), is a family of high-bypass geared turbofan engines produced by Pratt & Whitney. The various models can generate 15,000 to 33,000 pounds-force (67 to 147 kilonewtons) of thrust. As of 2025, they are used on the Airbus A220, Airbus A320neo family, and Embraer E-Jet E2. They were also used on new Yakovlev MC-21s until exports to Russia were stopped as part of the international sanctions during the invasion of Ukraine.
Following years of development and testing on various demonstrators, the program officially launched in 2008 with the PW1200G destined for the later-canceled Mitsubishi SpaceJet. The first successful flight test occurred later that year. The PW1500G variant, designed for the A220, became the first certified engine in 2013. P&W is estimated to have spent $10 billion to develop the engine family. The type certificate for the PW1100G is held by International Aero Engines while the other versions are held by Pratt & Whitney.
Unlike traditional turbofan engines whose single shaft forces all components to turn at the same speed, the PW1000G has a gearbox between the fan and the low-pressure core. This allows each section to operate at its optimal speed. Pratt & Whitney says this enables the PW1000G to use 16% less fuel and produce 75% less noise than previous generation engines.
The engine family initially garnered interest from airlines due to its fuel efficiency, but technical problems have hurt its standing in the market. For example, early problems with the PW1100G variant, which powers the A320neo family, grounded aircraft and caused in-flight failures. Some engines were built with contaminated powdered metal, requiring repairs of 250 to 300 days. Some airlines chose the CFM LEAP engine instead.
Development
Precursors Wind tunnel tests were conducted at the NASA Glenn Research Center in the late 1980s using Pratt & Whitney’s 17-inch diameter ducted fan model. In summer 1993, Pratt & Whitney started to test its Advanced Ducted Propulsor (ADP) demonstrator at the NASA Ames Wind Tunnel, using a 4:1, gearbox. Its fan with 18 reversing pitch composite blades had a 15:1 bypass ratio. It aimed to cut fuel consumption by 6–7%, emissions by 15%, and generate less noise due to lower fan tip speed of , down from in conventional 5:1 bypass turbofans. While the gearbox and larger fan weighed more, this was mitigated by using 40% composites by weight, up from 15%. In 1994 P&W was planning to run a gearbox for of thrust. Additional model scale tests of the ADP were conducted in the NASA Glenn Low-Speed Wind Tunnel from 1995 through 1997 to investigate lower fan tip speeds and lower fan pressure ratios.
P&W first attempted to build a production geared turbofan starting around 1998, with the PW8000, targeted for the range. This was an upgrade of the existing PW6000 that replaced the fan section with a gear box and a new single-stage fan, which would provide about 90% of the propulsive power of the engine. The PW8000 engine aimed for 10% lower operating costs, or $600,000 per aircraft annually.
The PW8000 had an 11:1 bypass ratio (twice that of the V2500), a 40:1 overall pressure ratio, and 13 rotor stages instead of the 17 in the V2500 for similar thrusts. Preliminary development was to end by June 1, the first test for 10 months later, and certification 20 months after, for $400 million. Pratt had tested gearboxes for 950 hours for $350 million in the previous decade and aimed for 99.5% efficiency. The ADP gearbox was 30% more powerful and the reversing pitch fan was not retained for the PW8000. P&W was to control 60% of the program, shared with IAE partners MTU and FiatAvio but not Rolls-Royce, and possibly with Volvo and MHI.
Its turbine ran at 9,160 rpm, reduced by 3:1 for a 3,250 rpm fan having a blade tip speed down from , dropping noise to 30 EPNdB cumulated below Stage 3 requirements. The fan had 20 titanium blades, and moved of air per second in climb. The conventional 3-stage compressor was followed by a 5-stage, 12:1 compressor fitted with 700 blades inspired by the military program's low aspect-ratio airfoils. A floatwall/TALON combustor was followed by a single stage HP turbine and a counter rotating 3-stage LP turbine with 400 blades, both computational fluid dynamics (CFD) optimized. The gearbox could handle . The physical size of the gearbox was in diameter, or no more than half the gearbox size of the PW-Allison 578-DX propfan demonstrator engine that Pratt & Whitney worked jointly on with Allison in the 1980s. The gearbox consisted of 40 components, weighed , and shared a oil tank with the rest of the engine. The efficiency of the gearbox was 99.7%. Eight engines would have been used for certification. After several years, the PW8000 project was abandoned.
Soon afterwards the ATFI project appeared, using a PW308 core but with a new gearbox and a single-stage fan. It had its first run on March 16, 2001. This led to the Geared Turbofan (GTF) program, which was based around a newly designed core jointly developed with German MTU Aero Engines.
Geared turbofan (GTF)
By 2006, Pratt & Whitney was spending $100 million per year on geared turbofan development for the next generation of single-aisle airliners, and focusing on the thrust range. At the time, P&W was supporting 36% of the engines in the Western-operated commercial fleet, compared to CFM's 33% (growing), GE's 13%, Rolls-Royce's 11%, and IAE's 6% (growing); but it was decreasing as it was mostly based on the older JT8D. The company was hoping the GTF could cut fuel burn by up to 12% and noise by 31 dB compared with then-current engines. P&W was planning a ground engine demonstration in late 2007, aimed at thrust with a 2 m (80 in)-diameter fan. The first ground test of the demonstrator was performed in November 2007 at West Palm Beach, Florida.
In October 2007, the GTF was selected to power the 70- to 90-seat Mitsubishi Regional Jet (MRJ). In March 2008, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries launched the MRJ with an order for 25 aircraft from All Nippon Airways, then targeting a 2013 entry into service. In July 2008, the GTF was renamed PW1000G, the first in a new line of "PurePower" engines.
Flight testing
The engine was first tested on the Pratt & Whitney Boeing 747SP on July 11, 2008 through mid-August 2008, totaling 12 flights and 43.5 flight hours. It then flew starting October 14, 2008 on an Airbus A340-600 in Toulouse on the number two pylon.
Testing of the CSeries bound PW1524G model began in October 2010. In addition to the geared turbofan, the initial designs included a variable-area fan nozzle (VAFN), which allows improvements in propulsive efficiency across a range of the flight envelope. However, the VAFN has since been dropped from production designs due to high system weight. The PW1500G engine achieved Transport Canada type certification on February 20, 2013. The first flight test on one of its intended production airframes, the Bombardier CSeries (Airbus A220), was on September 16, 2013.
The A320 engine, the PW1100G, had made its first static engine test run on November 1, 2012, and was first tested on the 747SP on May 15, 2013. The first flight of the Airbus A320neo followed on September 25, 2014. The PW1100G engine achieved FAA type certification on December 19, 2014.
The fourth variant of the engine, the PW1900G for the Embraer E2, first flew on November 3, 2015 from Mirabel in Canada fitted to the Boeing 747SP test aircraft.
Production
The program cost is estimated at $10 billion. The list price was $ million in 2011. At the start of production in 2016, each GTF was costing PW $10m to build, more than the sale price, but was expected eventually to fall below $2 million per engine. MTU provides the first four stages of the high-pressure compressor, the low-pressure turbine and other components. In October 2016, MTU started to deliver the engine assembled on its line to Airbus.
In November 2016, Pratt had fixed the engine-start problem and aimed to deliver 150 powerplants by year's end, 50 fewer than planned. This was because less than one-third of fan blades were passing inspection at the start of the year, a figure that rose to 75% as the year went on. Fuel-burn performance was 16% better than the IAE V2500 baseline, on target, and even 18% better in best cases. The 2017 delivery goal was set at 350 to 400 engines.
The troubled introduction led customers to choose the CFM LEAP, which won 396 A320neo orders compared to 39 for the GTF from January through early August 2017: 46% of the GTF-powered A320neos were out of service for at least one week in July 2017 compared with just 9% of those using the LEAP. The GTF's market share fell from 45% to 40% in 2016, but 1,523 planes (%) were still undecided, and as of August 2017 Pratt had an 8,000-engine orderbook including 1,000 non-Airbus planes.
On 24 October 2017, a 99.8% dispatch reliability was attained and Pratt remained on track to deliver 350 to 400 engines in 2017, as 254 have been delivered including 120 in the third quarter, but 12–15% were diverted for spares as the carbon air seal and combustor liners were wearing out quickly, requiring engine removals to change the part. P&W expects to deliver over 2,500 GTFs from 2018 to 2020, more than 10,000 engines by 2025.
After 15 PW1200Gs for the Mitsubishi MRJ development were built in Mirabel and Middletown, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries started final assembly in Nagoya in mid 2018 for the MRJ 2020 introduction. Icing, thermal environment, stall, drainage, performance, operability and other development tests were completed. MHI manufactures the combustor and high-pressure turbine disks. The first engine was completed by November 2019.
Ultra high-bypass version
In 2010, Pratt & Whitney launched the development of an ultra high-bypass version, with a ratio higher than the PW1100G's 12.2:1 for the A320neo, to offer 20% better fuel consumption than a CFM56-7 and 25 dB less noise than the FAA's Stage 4. In 2012, wind tunnel tests were completed on an earlier version of the fan; in 2015, 275 hours of testing were completed on a fan rig. More than 175 hours of ground testing of key components were completed in October 2017, on a shorter duct inlet, a part of the nacelle and a fan with lower-pressure ratio blades, fewer than the 20 blades of the PW1100G. The US FAA Continuous Lower Energy, Emissions and Noise (CLEEN) program sponsors the tests, with its technologies to be validated in a flight test campaign. It could power the Boeing New Midsize Airplane in the mid-2020s and Airbus' response, and would compete against the Rolls-Royce UltraFan and a CFM LEAP higher-thrust version.
GTF Advantage (PW1000G/2-JM)
In December 2021, Pratt & Whitney announced an updated GTF Advantage version of the A320neo's PW1100G. The said it would offers 1% more fuel efficiency, more durability, and 34,000 lbf (151 kN) of thrust, up to 8% more than before at hot and high airports. These improvements would be achieved by adding flow into the core; tweaking the active clearance control between the turbine and seals, lowering the temperature in the high-pressure compressor; and using better, more durable coatings and damage-resistant blisk rotors. Officials said the new version would need more than a year of ground and flight testing and would become available in 2024. They also said some improvements could trickle down to the other variants.
On 7 October, 2025, the PW1100G/2-JM series engine, also marketed as GTF Advantage, was certified by EASA.
PW9000