KLM Cityhopper has grounded three of the 18 Embraer E195-E2s, Aviation Week reports. The planes are stored at the Twente Airport in the east of the Netherlands.
“This is due to insufficient MRO capacity at Pratt & Whitney. It is not an engine issue as such, but a maintenance issue. Due to the previous powdered metal issue, the interval for maintenance has been shortened, and so the capacity of their shops is insufficient to deal with the sheer number of engines being offered for maintenance,” a KLM spokesman said for Aviation Week. “[Pratt] expects that things will improve in the near future and that we will see that the problem will become less in the course of 2025.”
KLM announced that it expects to ground more planes, but the current number and predictions are uncertain.
The E195-E2 uses PW1900G engines, which recently had a problem with metal powder being found in the engine core. After that, PW shortened the service interval on the engines, and accordingly, the inspections were more frequent. The same problem affected the Embraer E2, but also the Airbus A220, which uses engines from the same family.