Quiet Technology Aerospace (QTA) has received an STC for its seventh airframe-specific carbon fibre engine inlet replacement barrel. This STC offers a terminating solution for Embraer Legacy 450/500 and Praetor 500/600 operators over the issue of engine inlet cowl inner barrel corrosion on the Honeywell HTF7500 engine inlets. This represents QTA's third inner barrel STC for aircraft powered by the HTF7000 series engine.

Combating an expensive and time-consuming problem of aluminium inner barrel corrosion and acoustic screen degradation on the 130 Embraer EMB545/550 series aircraft in service, QTA replaces the aluminium based inner barrel with a lighter weight carbon graphite composite barrel, which terminates the root cause of the corrosion issue, and comes with a lifetime warranty that remains with the aircraft's serial number and transfers to any future owner.

The Embraer Legacy solution is QTA's seventh approved STC in its carbon fibre engine inlet solution programme that began in 2015. Other inner barrel corrosion affected airframes benefitting from QTA's state of the art engineering and carbon fibre manufacturing are the Lear 60, Gulfstream G200 and G280, Hawker 1000, Falcon 2000LX/EX and Challenger 300/350 series. In its 35 year history, exactly zero QTA's inlet upgrades have failed on aircraft operating over 20 years. The company's first inlet upgrade was for the Douglas DC-8 in 1986.

QTA CEO Barry Fine says: “With our seventh STC approval finalised for the Embraer EMB 545/550 series aircraft, we now have a permanent and terminating corrosion fix for over 2,100 aircraft around the world. That represents a large amount of time and money saved to operators that have been continuously troubled by expensive and time consuming inner barrel corrosion on their original OEM inlet cowls, not to mention the already documented danger of engines ingesting corroded aluminium while operating. The carbon fibre inlet programme ensures QTA customers a safe, simple and quick experience when upgrading that is most of all, cost efficient and final. Ours is the industry's only permanent solution.

“Of important note to operators considering QTA's permanent solution versus a repair that is 100 per cent guaranteed to fail again; our warranty programme is for the life of the aircraft and is transferable to future owners. The warranty stays with the aircraft, period. There are companies promoting a repair to the corrosion problem that comes with a lifetime warranty but be aware of the fine print. There are a myriad of conditions and operator maintenance practices that must be followed to the letter in order for the warranty to remain in effect and not denied. A repair to the corrosion problem is only a temporary fix and it will fail again.”