In a special ceremony held at the Shangri-La’s Barr Al Jissah Resort and Spa Sultanate of Oman, Oman Air and CFM International celebrated 10 years of cooperation and together marked the achievement of 500,000 engine flight hours on the airline’s fleet of CFM56-7B engines.

Oman Air became the first airline in the Gulf region to order CFM56-7B-powered Boeing Next-Generation 737 aircraft and has been a CFM customer since 2001. The airline was formed in 1993 as the designated carrier of the Sultanate of Oman and, today, operates a fleet of 15 CFM-powered aircraft.

“We are pleased and honored to celebrate these two tremendous milestones with Oman Air, and the entire CFM Team extends its warmest congratulations,” said Jean-Paul Ebanga, president and CEO of CFM International.  “It is highly gratifying when an airline of this stature makes your products such an essential part of its operations. We have developed a marvelous relationship with Oman Air over the past decade and believe that the years ahead will only continue to strengthen that bond.”

Salim Al Kindy, Chief Technical Officer of Oman Air, added:

“The success of Oman Air’s relationship with CFM International is demonstrated by the length of our partnership. CFM has, over the last 10 years, provided outstanding support for our Boeing 737 fleet and has clearly demonstrated why they are world leaders in their field. Oman Air’s on-time performance is excellent and continues to improve. The reliability of our CFM56-7B engines has played an important part in achieving this. We look forward to working with CFM into the future and, together, to ensuring that Oman Air’s B737 fleet continues to provide an exceptional service for our ever-increasing number of customers.”

In October 2010, Oman Air and CFM signed a Rate per Flight Hour (RPFH) agreement for the airline’s fleet of CFM56-7B engines.  The RPFH is a comprehensive maintenance program customized to Oman Air’s specific requirements. Under the terms of the agreement, CFM guarantees the maintenance cost on a dollar per engine flight hour basis for the airline’s entire fleet of installed and spare CFM56-7B engines powering its fleet of 15 Boeing Next-Generation 737 aircraft throughout the term of the agreement.

The CFM56-7B engines in Oman Air’s fleet have performed extremely well in service, with the fleet maintaining a 99.98 percent departure reliability rate with no operational issues.

The CFM56-powered Boeing 737 family is the best-selling aircraft in commercial aviation history. The CFM56-7B brings the industry’s most advanced technology to the aircraft, providing low operating costs, high performance, high reliability, low noise and emissions and excellent operability.  Overall, more than 3,550 CFM56-7B-powered aircraft have been delivered to date, and the fleet has accumulated more than 131 million flight hours and 70 million flight cycles while maintaining a 99.98 percent departure reliability rate. This rate translates to less than one departure per 2,000 flights being delayed 15 minutes or more or canceled for engine-related issues. The CFM56-7 also has one of the lowest in-flight shutdown rates in the industry: .002 per 1,000 hours. The rate is equivalent to one engine-caused in-flight shutdown every 500,000 flight hours.

CFM56-7B engines are a product of CFM International, which is a joint venture between Snecma   (Safran group) and GE. CFM, the world’s leading supplier of commercial aircraft engines, has delivered nearly 22,000 engines to date and the fleet has achieved more than 520 million flight hours as the most reliable engines in the air.