Jet engines are breaking down. their manufacturers are raking in cash.

livemint.com:

Few industries do well when their products keep breaking down. Jet-engine makers are currently an exception—and this is raising eyebrows. Shares in RTX Corporation hit a record high last week after the aerospace conglomerate significantly beat second-quarter earnings forecasts.

Excluding one-time effects, operating profit in its Pratt & Whitney engine-making division rose 23%. GE Aerospace also reported a surge in demand for spare parts for commercial engines, and its stock closed at a 16-year high last Tuesday. In Europe, jet-engine manufacturers Rolls-Royce and Safran are expected to post robust results when they report this week.

For many in the aviation industry, it is hard to square such prosperity with problem-ridden engines that are causing huge headaches for everyone else. Pratt & Whitney’s geared turbofan, or GTF, and the LEAP built by CFM—a joint venture between GE and Safran—are the two main state-of-the-art engine families in today’s narrow-body commercial jets. Both are suffering from durability issues that are pushing up maintenance costs.

The GTF’s powder-metal defects have grounded hundreds of Airbus A320neo planes for inspections and engine removals. Shop visits have got longer, in part because the engine companies shed too many experienced employees during the pandemic. This problem has been compounded by a dearth of spare parts, which has diverted resources away from the manufacture of new engines.

During the second quarter, GE delivered 297 units of the LEAP, which includes models for both the A320neo and the Boeing 737 MAX, compared with 419 in the same period of 2023. Slow engine production is in turn slowing plane assembly and even orders. At the Farnborough International Airshow, which took place