CFM International logged $51.7 billion in orders from 1,500 commercial, military and spare CFM56 engines and commitments in 2011. This activity encompasses 3,056 Leap engines.

Sanad Aero Solutions, the component and engine financing solutions group of Mubadala Aeospace, has partnered with Abu Dhabi National Leasing (ADNL), a wholly owned asset based lease finance arm of the National Bank of Abu Dhabi, to provide up to $169 million in lease financing to Etihad Airways for spare engine sale and leaseback transaction. ADNL will provide Sanad with a fully underwritten long term lease facility in support of the purchase and leaseback of five General Electric GE90 and six Rolls-Royce Trent 500 engines.

Dialight specializes in LED technology for industrial, commercial, transportation and hazardous setting applications. In August, it added a new 14,000 lumen LED high-bay fixture called the DuroSite. The fixture delivers 93 lumens per watt light that comes with a five-year full performance warranty. The light can produce 20% more light than Dialight's previous high bay LED light but consumes the same 150 watts. The DuroSite has been tested to endure more than one year of damp heat exposure.

Saint-Gobain Performance Plastics has appointed Christophe Tourné as global aerospace marketing manager for its process systems business unit.

Two years ago, as Congressional negotiators were cooking up the latest iteration of the long awaited, multi-year FAA reauthorization bill, the repair station world—and the Aeronautical Repair Station Association (ARSA) in particular—was quickly losing its appetite.

Element Materials Technology has acquired mechanical testing company Mar-Test, headquartered in Cincinnati, Ohio.

In 2005, airframe manufacturers determined that passive radio frequency identification (RFID) technology presented an opportunity to get timely access to maintenance histories for parts. Through the efforts of the Air Transport Association (now A4A) and SAE International, testing standards and data specifications are in place to support passive RFID for storing parts' history directly on the parts.

The low-hanging fruit in fuel efficiency, of course, is to make aircraft lighter. A piece of trivia cited on American Airlines' website illustrates the bottom-line impact of trimming down: “Removing just one pound of weight from each aircraft in American's fleet would save more than 11,000 gallons of fuel annually.”