El Al and Pratt & Whitney Announce EcoPower Service Agreement

EAST HARTFORD, CT -- El Al Airlines signed a one-year agreement for Pratt & Whitney Global Service Partners' EcoPower engine wash service on its fleet of engines powering its Boeing 747s and 777s with an option to extend the agreement in one-year increments for up to three additional years. The washes will take place at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York. Pratt & Whitney is a United Technologies Corp. company.

"We are excited to help El Al operate more effectively and efficiently with our environmentally friendly EcoPower engine washing technology," says Joanne Hastings, director, Line Maintenance Services, Pratt & Whitney. "The benefits of washing engines with the advanced technology of our EcoPower service are becoming widely known in the industry."

Pratt & Whitney's patented EcoPower system washes engines to reduce fuel burn by as much as 1.2 percent, eliminate three pounds of carbon dioxide emissions for every pound of fuel saved, and decrease engine exhaust gas temperature by as much as 15 degrees Celsius, improving performance and increasing the amount of time an engine can stay on wing.

Pratt & Whitney launched the EcoPower engine washing service business in late 2004 and, to date, has completed more than 5,800 washes for more than 75 customers in 66 locations. The EcoPower engine wash service, offered through the Pratt & Whitney Global Service Partners network, uses a closed-loop system with pure, atomized water to wash aircraft engines, thus avoiding potential contaminant runoff. The system is more effective and much faster than traditional engine washing processes. Issued patents and applications cover various aspects of EcoPower engine wash services in several countries relating to features such as water atomization, the closed-loop system, effluent collection process and purification techniques.