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Jets

With Final Delivery of Last 747, Dave Kircher Sees a New Era Dawning for GEnx

Jay Stowe
January 31, 2023

When the last 747-8F freighter rolls out of the completion center at Boeing’s wide-body aircraft factory in Everett, Washington, on Jan. 31, it will be a poignant moment for Dave Kircher.

“In aviation, everybody can probably tell you two things: the first time they flew anything and the first time they flew on a 747,” he says. For Kircher it was a British Airways flight to London early in his career. “I’ll never forget being on that upper deck of a 747. It’s just iconic.”

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FIA16

Where Jet Engines Take a Licking But Keep On Ticking

Tomas Kellner
July 12, 2016
Every day is a bad day for flying if you hang out with Brian DeBruin. DeBruin runs GE Aviation’s jet engine test operations site in Peebles, Ohio, and his job is to make sure that GE engines keep working when they fly into an hailstorm, encounter a dust cloud or ingest a goose. He and his team even set off small explosions inside jet engines to simulate blade failure.
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Aerospace

GE Started Testing The World’s Largest Jet Engine

Tomas Kellner
April 22, 2016
How large is the world’s largest jet engine? So large that a professional basketball player would fit inside it comfortably with several feet to spare. Engineers at GE Aviation just assembled the first of these engines and put it on a test stand at the company’s massive boot camp for jet engines located in the woods near Peebles, Ohio.
It’s a giant.
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best of 2015

Best Pictures of 2015: The GE Edition

Tomas Kellner
January 04, 2016
Every year, GE sends photographers, filmmakers and other visual artists around the world to document its technology in action. 2015 was no different. Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer Vincent Laforet traveled to the high plains of Colorado to document how GE was testing its most advanced locomotive, pilot and photographer Adam Senatori visited three airshows on as many continents to get close to the latest planes powered by GE jet engines, and Chris New climbed to the top of an experimental wind turbine in the Mojave desert.
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Inside GE's Boot Camp For Jet Engines

November 04, 2014
There are few people who know more about bad days for flying than Brian De Bruin and his team at GE’s jet engine testing facility in Peebles, Ohio. The team’s job is to make sure that GE engines keep working when they run into bad thunderstorms or a stray seagull. They expose the machines to hail and monsoon rain, hit them with bird carcasses, and even set off small explosions inside to simulate blade failure. “Some of these tests are relatively benign, but others are quite damaging,” De Bruin says. “You’ve got to prove that your engines are good.”
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Dancing With Jet Engines: Marquese Scott Busts His Moves at GE's Aviation Bootcamp

October 02, 2014

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Sphere of Turbulence: What’s Hiding Inside a Mysterious Orb at GE’s Jet Engine Boot Camp?

March 07, 2014
Hiding deep in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains in southern Ohio is a boot camp for some of the world’s most powerful jet engines.
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Plants for Planes: GE Orders “Bathtubs of Biofuel” to Power Jet Engines

November 12, 2013

Day in and day out, engineers GE’s Peebles Test Operation subject jet engines to the FAA equivalent of a Tough Mudder race. From the giant GEnx to the tiny HondaJet, the engines must endure hurricane-force winds, bird strikes, heavy rain, hail, ice blasts and other extreme hardships to be certified for flight by aviation regulators. Like any endurance athlete, they consume a lot of calories to power through the course; as much as 200,000 bathtubs of jet fuel annually, or 10 million gallons.

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From Zero to Full Throttle: It Takes Tough Love to Test a Jet Engine

October 21, 2013
Tough love is one way to describe what Ray Staresina does to jet engines. Staresina is a “cell owner” at GE’s aviation boot camp deep in the woods outside Peebles, Ohio. His job is to expose new engines to extreme hardship beyond anything they are likely to encounter in service. His “cell” is a massive, 40-foot tall concrete box called Site 5C where some of the world’s largest jet engines must power through grueling tests required by the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration. “We bring in the engine, lock it in the frame and suspend it from the ceiling,” he says.
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