If Pratt & Whitney doesn’t quite own the low- and mid-power turboprop market, it at least has a long-term lease at rent-controlled prices. GE Aviation plans to challenge that primacy and the instrument of their run at PW will be the H-series engines of the sort Nextant is using.
GE is the giant in transport-category turbofan engines and in a tiny little Czech Republic company, Walter Aircraft Engines, it found a contender. Walter began life in the 1920s manufacturing engines for BMW, supported the German war effort during World War II and became a Cold War manufacturer after that, building the famed knockoff of the Rolls-Royce Nene that powered the MiG- 15. During the 1960s and 1970s, it branched into turboprops, developing a free-turbine design similar to the PT6 called the M601. This engine found application in Eastern Bloc designs, including the LET 410 twin. After the Soviet Union collapsed, Walter subsisted on aftermarket support. In 2007, GE bought Walter and invested heavily in improving the M601 into what are now the H-series engines.