Italy's ITA Airways to decide imminently on lawsuit over RTX engine faults

By Allison Lampert

RIO DE JANEIRO, June 7 (Reuters) - Italy’s ITA Airways will decide within the next eight weeks whether to sue aerospace supplier RTX’s Pratt & Whitney due to engine problems that have grounded almost 20% of its fleet of 80 aircraft, the carrier’s CEO said on Sunday.

Hundreds of A320neo planes, the latest version of the Airbus single-aisle jets, have been grounded globally.

This has been partly due to long waiting times for engine inspections and repairs, and after a manufacturing problem at Pratt & Whitney put pressure on the output of the fuel-efficient GTF engines in Airbus planes.

“It’s imminent,” Joerg Eberhart, CEO of ITA Airways, said on the sidelines of a global gathering of top airline executives in Rio de Janeiro. “We will have to decide within the next six to eight weeks.”

RTX did not immediately reply to a request for comment. The U.S.-based industrial giant has previously said Pratt is taking various steps to improve repairs after disclosing in 2023 a new GTF problem involving contaminated powder metal.

“So far, we are quantifying the damage we are facing, which is about 150 million euros," Eberhart said. "We are in talks with Pratt, and what they proposed so far is not sufficient to cover our damage.”

(Reporting by Allison Lampert in Rio de Janeiro, editing by Manuela Andreoni and Chris Reese)