iscover
The all new GE90 is perhaps the best placed of all the big turbofans for heavier developments of the 777. (GE)
Battle of the Giants — The Big Turbofans
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The Engines
The battle of the big fans is getting very, very hot. Pratt & Whitney, Rolls-Royce and General Electric are all desperate to sell their mightiest turbofans on the 777 and A330, desperate to justify the enormous costs of developing the most powerful gas turbines ever put into the air. Pratt’s is winning, Rolls is second and GE, for the moment, is behind.
Of course these three are fighting a vigorous war up and down the thrust scale. But the crucial battle for the high ground is in the big twins. With the launch of the A330 and 777, each engine maker knew it had to take on this new challenge or fall downmarket and lose the chance to sell untold numbers of even larger engines in the future.
So all three makers took a big deep breath and strode into these enormous thrust ratings above 67,000lb (800kN). GE took the deepest breath of all and developed an entirely new engine for the 777, the GE90. Pratt’s produced two bigger versions of its PW4000 series, one for the A330 and one for the 777. Rolls-Royce followed a similar course by developing two new members of its RB211 family, the Trent 700 and 800. The GE90 was too big for the A330, for which GE offers the older CF6.
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