Pratt & Whitney Canada’s FAST (Flight Data Acquisition Storage and Transmission System) engine diagnostic, prognostic and health-management (DPHM) system recently received a Transport Canada supplemental type certificate (STC) for use on Bombardier Dash 8 Series 200 and 300 turboprops, P&WC announced Wednesday on the occasion of the annual Regional Airline Association Convention in St. Louis. Transport Canada STC No. SA12-70 now includes Bombardier Models Q200, Q300 and Q400.
Celebrating the 30th anniversary of the PW100 series turboprop at RAA, P&WC earned the latest FAST STC following extensive trials on a QantasLink Dash 8-300 in Sydney, Australia. The company expects FAST to receive a Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) STC for the ATR 72-600 later this year.
The DPHM system provides operators with objective operational, trending and exceedance data to help them make informed decisions about preventive maintenance and better manage repair and overhaul expenses. They also reduce unscheduled maintenance, lower operating costs and increase aircraft availability, said the company.
“Dispatch reliability is critical,” said John Di Bert, vice president of customer service for P&WC. “That’s why we are steadily moving our customers toward a planned operating environment where maintenance can be synchronized with their schedules and downtime kept to an absolute minimum. As a one-stop application for managing all aircraft performance data, FAST represents a significant competitive advantage for these operators.”
The FAST STC comes as P&WC commemorates several milestones associated with the PW100 engine family, including its entry into service in December 1984 in Canada on a Dash 8 operated by provincially owned airline NorOntair. Months later, the PW100 would enter service on the ATR 42 and the Embraer Brasilia.
P&WC launched the PW100 family to extend its turboprop-power-range offering from its then current 1,000 shaft horsepower (shp) at the high end of the PT6A family. The PW100 has since grown from 1,800 shp to more than 5,000 shp. The company has certified 38 PW100 engine models since the 1980s and produced more than 8,000 engines that have logged over 155 million hours in the air. Today, more than 2,800 PW100-powered regional aircraft fly with more than 500 operators in more than 130 countries.
“Turboprops offer flexibility and efficiency for airline operations, connecting city pairs in traditional and emerging markets that would have never been accessible in the past,” explained Pratt & Whitney Canada v-p of marketing Richard Dussault. “The PW100 is ideal for short hauls because of its excellent operating economics, including 30 percent to 45 percent less fuel burn and emissions compared to similar-sized regional jets.”
