Despite paying over $30 million, ATI Jet, also known as Jetvia, says Pratt & Whitney Canada’s failure hamstrung operations.
ATI Jet and Pratt & Whitney Canada are at the center of the latest legal dispute involving business aviation engine maintenance programs.
El Paso-based ATI Jet, also known as Jetvia, filed suit against Pratt & Whitney Canada.
It alleges that the engine manufacturer systematically failed to provide rental engines and timely maintenance while continuing to collect more than $30 million in Eagle Service Plan (ESP) fees.
Company executives say they lost “hundreds of days” of charter revenue.
ATI Jet is seeking “compensatory and consequential damages, including exemplary damages where appropriate, resulting from P&WC’s breaches of contract, fraudulent inducement, breach of the duty of good faith and honest performance, deceit/fraudulent misrepresentation, and all other tortious acts.”
Pratt & Whitney Canada is a subsidiary of RTX Corporation, formerly Raytheon Technologies.
On its website, it states, “Our engines help connect people, grow economies, and defend freedom. Our customers depend on us to get where they’re going and back again. We are Pratt & Whitney. We are Dependable Engines.”
ATI Jet ranks as the 16th-largest U.S. private jet operator by charter and fractional flight hours.
It follows a similar lawsuit by Flexjet, Inc. against Honeywell.
That lawsuit was settled in December, with Flexjet receiving over a $1 billion in cash and services.
Quinn Emanuel, the law firm that represented Flexjet, has now joined ATI Jet’s legal team.
ATI Jet filed the complaint on April 7 in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas.
It seeks rescission of a January 2025 settlement agreement between the parties.
ATI Jet wants compensatory and exemplary damages, attorneys’ fees, and termination of more than a dozen ESP agreements covering ATI Jet’s Learjet 60 fleet.
Last week, Pratt & Whitney Canada filed to have the case dismissed so it can be moved to Canadian courts.
Pratt & Whitney did not respond to a request for comment.
Allegations shine a spotlight on issues that have come to the surface as OEMs have sought to blame delays and the inability to fulfill service contracts on force majeure due to the Covid pandemic.
For charter and fractional operators in particular, aircraft availability is everything.
Unlike corporate flight departments, which may charter an aircraft when their own aircraft is unavailable, charter and fractional companies generate revenue only when airplanes are flying.
Every day an aircraft remains grounded represents lost revenue.
There are disrupted schedules and disappointed customers.
ATI Jet asserts long-term damage to its reputation.
Operators assert OEMs prioritize new customers over existing customers who have paid millions of dollars for MRO support programs.
During Corporate Jet Investor last November, Nicholas Air CEO Nicholas Correnti said, “I don’t think there’s a supply chain issue… We’re producing airplanes at a staggering rate, and the backlogs are 18 months to two years, depending on the OEM. All those airplanes being produced and sold off the assembly lines have to have the parts that the current aircraft that are in circulation need.”
Flexjet made similar allegations in its lawsuit against Honeywell.
Speaking to Private Jet Card Comparisons, Flexjet Chairman Kenn Ricci said, “They were brazen about it. And that’s ultimately what I think is sad. They agreed. They should have honored it.”
In its filing, ATI states:
‘Pratt & Whitney Canada deliberately chose to prioritize engine availability for new aircraft deliveries and new customer acquisitions over its contractual obligations to existing ESP customers. Companies and individuals who had already signed long-term contracts, paid substantial fees, and staked their livelihoods on P&WC’s promises were treated as a lower priority than the next revenue opportunity. This pattern of conduct was not accidental. It was institutional and intentional.’
According to the complaint, ATI Jet operates 24 Learjet 60s, making it the largest Learjet 60 operator in the world.
The company says it has been flying charter customers since 1976, accumulating millions of flight miles without an accident or FAA violation.
The company’s dependence on dispatch reliability is why it chose Pratt & Whitney Canada’s premium Eagle Service Plan.
Beginning around 2016, ATI enrolled most of its fleet under more than a dozen Gold Plan ESP agreements.
The agreements covered the Pratt & Whitney Canada PW305 engines that power the Learjet 60.
The OEM’s engines power a variety of private jets, including other Learjet models, Textron Aviation’s Latitude, the Gulfstream G200, and Dassault Falcon 2000s.
According to the complaint, ATI became one of Pratt’s largest and most important ESP customers.
It paid monthly hourly maintenance fees in exchange for comprehensive engine support.
The Gold Plan covered scheduled maintenance, hot-section inspections, overhauls, labor, freight, and replacement components.
The agreements promised lease engine support whenever a covered maintenance event required removing an engine for more than 10 days.
The contracts also advertised “priority access” to a strategically located worldwide pool of rental engines.
ATI argues those provisions were fundamental to the company’s decision to participate in the premium maintenance program.
The complaint repeatedly emphasizes that ATI believed it was purchasing operational certainty as much as it was purchasing engine maintenance.
Rather than maintain its own inventory of expensive spare engines, ATI says it relied on Pratt & Whitney Canada’s promise that replacement engines would be available when maintenance required grounding one of its aircraft.
That business model is common throughout business aviation.
Engine maintenance programs allow operators to convert unpredictable overhaul costs into predictable hourly expenses while reducing the capital required to maintain spare engines and components.
The tradeoff is trust, ATI Jet argues.
Operators must rely on the program provider to deliver support when needed.
ATI says that trust was misplaced.
The central factual allegation in the lawsuit concerns the size of Pratt & Whitney Canada’s rental engine pool.
According to ATI, Pratt maintained approximately 12 rental engines to support an installed worldwide fleet of more than 800 Learjet 60 engines.
ATI argues that it represents barely 1.5% of the installed fleet.
The complaint further alleges that Pratt’s own internal analyses concluded that industry practice required rental engine availability of between 4% and 8% of the installed fleet.
Had Pratt maintained inventory at the low end of that range, ATI argues, approximately 32 rental engines would have been available instead of 12.
At the upper end, the rental pool would have approached 64 engines.
ATI alleges Pratt knowingly chose not to expand the fleet despite understanding the consequences.
Instead, according to the complaint, Pratt allegedly prioritized engine availability for new aircraft deliveries and attracting new customers over meeting contractual obligations owed to existing Eagle Service Plan customers.
Those allegations form the foundation for ATI’s claims that Pratt acted in bad faith and fraudulently induced customers to continue paying into the maintenance program.
ATI Jet portrays the relationship as deteriorating steadily rather than collapsing suddenly.
The operator says it continued paying monthly ESP charges while maintenance turnaround times lengthened and rental engine support became increasingly difficult to obtain.
Aircraft allegedly remained grounded for weeks and months.
ATI Jet was repeatedly told that no rental engines were available, according to court documents.
The impact hit ATI Jet like dominoes.
Canceled charter flights reduced revenue.
Aircraft utilization declined.
Customers looked elsewhere.
Crew scheduling became more complicated.
Maintenance planning became increasingly unpredictable.
ATI says it eventually was forced to purchase three spare PW305 engines on the open market for $2.5 million to restore a portion of its operational capability.
The company argues that those purchases represented funds that would otherwise have been invested in expanding its fleet and business.
The complaint estimates ATI Jet paid Pratt & Whitney Canada more than $20 million in cumulative Eagle Service Plan charges over the course of the relationship.
However, company officials say the number is actually over $30 million.
The lawsuit seeks recovery of those payments along with consequential damages arising from allegedly grounded aircraft, lost charter revenue, increased operating expenses, and damage to ATI Jet’s reputation.
ATI Jet also seeks various contractual credits it claims remain unpaid, including rental-engine credits, reserve adjustments, and fleet discounts.
The complaint does not place a total dollar value on all claimed damages.
The most significant factual allegations concern Aircraft Parts Solutions (APS), a third-party supplier.
According to ATI Jet, Pratt & Whitney Canada contracted with APS to acquire Learjet 60 aircraft, dismantle them, and use their engines to expand the rental engine pool.
ATI Jet alleges Pratt & Whitney Canada ordered 40 engines through the arrangement.
APS reportedly delivered the first 18 engines without issue.
When engines 19 and 20 became available, however, ATI Jet alleges Pratt & Whitney declined to accept delivery.
According to the complaint, APS was allegedly told the additional engines were no longer needed.
ATI Jet contends that on the very same day Pratt & Whitney Canada declined those available engines, ATI was informed that no rental engines were available for its grounded aircraft.
The operator argues that the sequence demonstrates rental engine shortages were not unavoidable market conditions but deliberate business decisions.
ATI Jet relies heavily on statements allegedly made by a former senior employee of the OEM.
According to the complaint, a senior executive responsible for customer support allegedly opposed providing rental engines to ATI Jet because doing so would “set a precedent.”
ATI Jet argues that the statement reflected a broader internal strategy.
Because ATI operated the world’s largest Lear 60 fleet, satisfying its contractual expectations could encourage similar requests from other Eagle Service Plan customers.
Rather than expand rental capacity, ATI Jet alleges that the defendant routinely informed customers that engines were simply unavailable.
ATI seeks to have the court rescind a settlement agreement between the two companies.
ATI writes:
‘In the Settlement Agreement, P&WC did not admit liability but did admit that ATI Jet had suffered economic losses due to rental engine shortages. During settlement negotiations, P&WC represented to ATI Jet that the shortage of rental engines was a genuine operational constraint, the result of market forces and supply limitations beyond P&WC’s control. This representation was false. P&WC knew it was false when it made it. A former senior P&WC employee has confirmed that P&WC’s internal facts were fundamentally inconsistent with the representations P&WC made to ATI Jet during negotiations. Engine unavailability was not a constraint. It was a choice…ATI Jet is entitled to rescission of the settlement agreement and full recovery of all damages flowing from P&WC’s fraudulent inducement…The six months after execution of the settlement were, by objective measurement, worse than the six months before it.’
That agreement was signed on January 17, 2025.
Rental engine availability represents only part of ATI Jet’s complaint.
The lawsuit also alleges maintenance turnaround times expanded dramatically beyond industry norms.
According to the private jet operator, a routine hot-section inspection should ordinarily take 30 days.
An engine overhaul generally should take between 60 and 90 days.
Instead, it alleges one engine submitted for overhaul in January 2023 remained in the OEM’s possession for 806 days.
Two additional engines allegedly remained at the OEM’s facilities for more than 323 days and 108 days, respectively, at the time the lawsuit was filed.
It says there are no projected completion dates.
Jetvia recently ended its guaranteed jet card and fractional programs.
However, it hasn’t made any connection between that decision and the allegations in the lawsuit.
(Editor’s note: An earlier version had an incorrect number of how much ATI Jet paid for its engine program.)
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