Quiet Technology Aerospace (QTA) has delivered its 200th inlet cowl upgrade incorporating a carbon fibre replacement inner barrel to Albertsons Companies, a private Gulfstream G280 operator based in Boise, Idaho. A growing and expensive fleet wide problem, these aircraft are plagued with the issue of inlet cowl inner barrel corrosion on the Honeywell HTF7250G engine inlets.

QTA has also announced milestone progress on the eighth airframe candidate for the company's four-year-old STC programme. The Gulfstream G450 is now in the final stages of assembling a first article for FAA conformity to finalise the STC. This particular inlet offers substantial weight savings of 40 pounds. Like all QTA composite inner barrels, the barrel will eliminate corrosion permanently on the G450 aircraft. QTA will have exchange inlets available as early as September this year with the STC forecast to be awarded by the end of August.

QTA's successful engineering and manufacturing programme combats an expensive and time-consuming problem of aluminum engine inlet cowl inner-barrel corrosion and acoustic screen degradation on several business jet airframes. QTA replaces the aluminum based inner barrel with a lighter weight carbon graphite composite barrel that terminates the root cause of the corrosion issue and comes with a lifetime warranty that remains with the aircraft's serial number and transfers to any future owner. It is the only permanent solution available today.

When installed, the inlets appearance is said to be better than originally manufactured. This is not a repair to the original aluminum inlet, which will certainly fail again, potentially causing engine damage. It is a permanent and terminating solution to the corrosion issue.

QTA CEO Barry Fine explains: “The delivery to Albertsons of our 200th inlet upgrade and the imminent approval of a terminating solution for G450 operators, means QTA now has a permanent and terminating corrosion fix for over 2,100 aircraft around the world. Everyone at QTA is proud of this achievement. That represents a large amount of time and money saved to operators that have been continuously troubled by expensive and time-consuming inner barrel corrosion on their original OEM inlet cowls, not to mention the already documented danger of engines ingesting corroded aluminum while operating. The carbon fibre inlet programme ensures QTA customers a safe, simple and quick experience when upgrading that is most of all, cost efficient and final. Ours is the industry's only permanent solution.”

“Of important note to operators considering QTA's permanent solution versus an MRO repair that is 100% guaranteed to fail again is that our warranty programme is for the life of the aircraft and is transferable to future owners. The warranty automatically transfers to the new owner. Other companies may promote a 'lifetime warranty' but only QTA offers a transferrable warranty.”

The QTA programme was awarded its seventh STC in autumn 2019 for the Embraer Legacy 450/500 series as well as to the next generation Embraer Praetor 500/600. Other inner barrel corrosion affected airframes benefitting from QTA's state of the art engineering and carbon fibre manufacturing are the Learjet 60, Gulfstream G200 and G280, Hawker 1000, Falcon 2000LX/EX and Challenger 300/350 series.

In its 34-year history, zero QTA inlet upgrades have failed on aircraft operating over 21 years. The company's first inlet upgrade was for the Douglas DC-8 in 1986.