The aerospace industry is “bouncing back” after the pandemic with booming demand and a renewed focus on sustainability, said Mohamed Ali, vice president and general manager of the engineering division at GE Aerospace.

Ali oversees the design, development, certification and field services of GE Aerospace’s commercial engines.

Additionally, he is responsible for safely operating, satisfying customer needs, and maintaining more than 30,000 aircraft engines world-wide.

Growth in 2022

After a tricky few years for the aerospace industry, Ali says he has seen it going from strength to strength in 2022.

“There is the saying, what doesn’t kill you will makes you stronger,” he said. “Certainly Covid has been hard on all of us.

“The beauty is the industry is bouncing back, and everybody is bouncing back. And we believe we want to build it better. We can rebuild better coming out of Covid, especially on sustainability. And that’s really the year in summary for us.

“People have an innate desire to fly, go to any airport and you’re going to see it and when I do that, it feels like when I was a young kid, going for the first time to fly.

“The beauty is this industry has enabled hundreds of millions, perhaps billions of people, to fly and experience the joy of a connected world because when the world is connected, it’s a better world. The world is better when it flies.”

‘Focused on sustainability’

He added: “I think that’s what we are seeing, the industry’s bouncing back. We are tremendously focused on sustainability, with all the progress that we’re making.

“It’s phenomenal to be at the ground level of putting these innovations that in 10 or 20 years I would look back at and I would say I was part of that and my team was part of that. And I brag about that with everybody, and especially to my kids and hopefully my grandkids as well.”

Sustainability is something that drives GE Aerospace across all of its products and technologies. Ali said he and his team remained committed to achieving the change necessary to meet the ambitious targets the industry has set.

‘Huge responsibility’

“We take this very seriously,” he said. “It’s a responsibility we have as a leader in the industry. Every two seconds there is an aircraft taking off, perhaps even less now, with our engines or our partner engines.

“At the same time, it’s about three out of four aircraft are powered by our engines and our partners, so we have a huge responsibility in this industry. And it’s upon us as a commitment to the planet, to our grandchildren and children.

“We share in the industry goal to decarbonise by 2050, to be net zero by 2050. And we are committed to develop the technologies and maturing these technologies to achieve at least 20 per cent better fuel efficiency, 20 per cent less co2, run on SAF and achieve 100 per cent, also run on hydrogen in the future, and the hybrid electric technologies that we are maturing and developing.

“We are committed to a whole suite of technologies that will enable us in the latter part of this decade and into the next decade to pick the optimum architectures and technologies to meet the goals that we set for ourselves.”
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