Class is Always in Session at the CTC

With more than 300 aircraft in India powered by Pratt & Whitney engines, and more on the way, the timing of creating a customer training center in India couldn't have been better.

"A very important piece to being successful with entry into service is training airline engineers and technicians how to do maintenance," said Amit Pathak, general manager of the Customer Training Center in Hyderabad, India.

Opened in 2015, the Customer Training Center quickly earned its federal Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) certification, allowing Pratt & Whitney to commercialize its training.

"Usually the process takes about four to six months, but we were lucky enough to have good support from the authority because we got our approvals done in just about one and a half months' time," said Shirdi Sounder Rajan, quality manager at the Customer Training Center in India.

The facility has the capability to train almost 4,000 students a year.

Employees at major Indian airlines turn to Pratt & Whitney experts to learn anything and everything about our engines, delving into the hardware using a borescope to find any possible hardware iterations.

Training manager Dhandapani Muthu's mentorship is so valued; his work with a major airline earned him an Eagle Award.

"I take the students in front of the engines. I make them – I grade them – to remove the component, external components like a fan blade, which has many actuators. We have fuel actuators, oil actuators, fuel systems, we have many components on the external sides. We give them the documentation and make sure they follow the safety maintenance practices," Muthu said.

Pratt & Whitney now has three Customer Training Centers globally – East Hartford, Beijing, and now India. Three sites that share one goal – customer satisfaction.

"The way we have designed the whole facility it is to provide a world-class experience to our customers," Pathak said, "something equivalent to coming all the way over to East Hartford."