Crosses 5.25 Million Flight Hours, Some 1.25 Million In The Last 30 Months

Continental Motors Group recently celebrated a major milestone when its CD-100 series jet fuel burning piston engines passed the 5.25 million flight hours’ mark, with a total of now over 5,000 Continental Diesel engines delivered since start of series production in 2002. As a result, Continental has surpassed all other manufacturers combined. The last 1.25 million flight hours have been flown in 2.5 years, underlining the high utilization of these engines by aviation professionals such as flight schools and aerial work companies.

“The fuel-efficient and reliable Continental Diesel engines became a success story in a challenging market environment. Since the production started in 2002, over 5,000 new engines (99 kW and 114 kW (135 and 155 hp)) have been installed in client aircraft in the field. We expect to exceed the 5,500-engine milestone in 2017. In the last nine months, the cumulative flight time logged by end-users has risen by half a million hours to 5.25 million hours, a figure that shows just how intensively these engines are being operated by Continental’s loyal diesel customers,” said Jürgen Schwarz, Vice President Engineering, Continental Motors Group. “As a result of continuous product development and improvement, we have also increased product dependability significantly with only 1.1 unscheduled maintenance events per 1,000 hrs. ,” he added.

High-frequency flyers, such as flight schools or aero-clubs, benefit not only from the product quality that allows the highest dispatch rates in the industry but also from the fact that these engines can run on most aviation jet fuels, usually much cheaper than avgas. Pilots operating aircraft in regions of the world where no leaded avgas is available also appreciate these fuel-efficient diesel engines. Accordingly, the annual utilization of each Continental Diesel engine is over 250 hours, reaching well over 1,000 hours in certain flight schools. This helps to explain why the users of Continental Diesel engines reported 5.25 million cumulative flying hours by the end of March 2017.

The company has also reported excellent figures regarding the reliability and safety of its engines as a result of continued product improvement over the years. Over the last 52 weeks, the CD-135 only had 1.74 in-flight shutdowns per 100,000 flight hours which is far beyond industry standard.

(Source: Continental Motors news release)

FMI: www.continentalmotors.aero