Continental Aerospace Technologies has started stocking new, factory rebuilt, and factory overhauled engines on the shelf, eliminating long wait times for replacement engines for a growing list of engine types. The announcement was made at Aero Friedrichshafen in Germany on April 22. Those getting ready to send their engines away are encouraged to look at the list of available engines and they might be able to have one on its way in one to 75 days. “We understand how critical uptime is to our customers’ operations,” said Oliver Leber, Vice President of Global Sales & Applications Engineering at Continental. “Our FastTrack Engine Program delivers reliable, factory-supported solutions that simplify the replacement process while upholding the performance, quality, and support customers expect from Continental.”
Continental said it’s continuously updating its list of available engines and will be expanding the model offerings as the program gains momentum. The system was set up in response to a growing backlog of orders for engine replacement that began with supply chain issues several years ago.
Selection looks….minimal.
Not much of a program, there are only 3 engines (all “new” IO-370 engines).
Well, I guess you have to start somewhere. 😉
It’s hard to give them much credit for this, since it is basically just good customer service. I suspect they will emphasize their big bore engines for people running fleet operations.
I can’t believe they were not already doing this.
This is Continental’s response to Lycoming’s long lead times on IO-360-L2A engines. It is a drop-in replacement for the 172-R and -S, among others, but it requires an STC.
I’d be very much surprised if the program included sandcast and permold engines, ready and on the shelf. That business model went away in the early 90’s.
It would be nice to see them designing drop-in replacement engines that are compatible with the new unleaded avgas variants. An engine which can use unleaded doesn’t make the airframe capable but it’s a great start and one way or another that’s the future of avgas fueled GA aircraft.