In 1977, a small team in Rio de Janeiro powered up their first jet engine inside a former industrial manufacturing plant at Brazil's Galeão International Airport, opening what would eventually become GE Aerospace's most important engine test facility in Latin America: Celma, which today spans three different locations in Rio, Petropolis, and Três Rios. In September, nearly five decades later, the Rio test cell celebrated a major milestone - 9,000engines tested - marking a journey of innovation that its current test leader has witnessed from the beginning.

Edison Silva, who happens to share a name with the company's founder, is recognized as a legend in GE Aerospace's maintenance, repair, and overhaul (MRO) and test cell history. Having started when the Rio site had only one test cell and the commercial jet industry was still relatively young, we asked him to share his memories of the early improvements and later technological advances that helped make such a dramatic milestone possible.

"It Starts Like This"

"I came to work here just as the test cell construction was being finalized in 1976," says Silva, who joined the company that owned the site, Varig Airlines, in 1972. "Back then, Varig needed local infrastructure to overhaul and test the CF6-50 engines that powered its new fleet of widebody DC-10s, instead of outsourcing it to Lufthansa and Air France." When Varig built its own test cell and MRO shop, they trained people like Silva to become test cell operators in an analog world.

"At first, I was tasked to establish a process of measuring and calibrating the system," Silva recalls. "This is back when we had physical one-meter spreadsheets that we had to read parameter by parameter. So in a way, the first evolution I witnessed was in 1985, when we transitioned to the Oracle system, which provided automatic data acquisition." Five years after this first step into digital technology, the Rio test cell tested its 1,000th engine, having averaged less than 100 a year from 1977 to 1990.

The 2,000th came much quicker, in 1997, as the site doubled its previous pace. And when GE Aerospace acquired the facility in 1998, its integration into the company's global network accelerated its output in step with the industry's broader technological advances.

In 1999, GE Aerospace adopted the modern engine-testing platform ASE2000, by AeroSystems Engineering (now Calspan), after which, Silva says, "the time between all these milestones became shorter and shorter." By 2000, they'd tested 3,000 engines and their portfolio had expanded to include variants of the CFM56* engine and later the CF34 engine. The new engines and faster tempo reflected the site's growing strategic importance to GE Aerospace.

"It is clear that joining GE Aerospace has had a transformative impact on Celma's test cell operations, driving significant improvements in operational efficiency, process control, and production volume," says Silva. "These advancements have been key to the accelerated growth observed in recent years. At GE Aerospace, we remain deeply committed to continuous improvement and operational excellence."

Silva conducting an engine test during Celma's 60th anniversary in 2011.

The Rio site hit 4,000 engines in the mid-2000s and, in 2011, Celma celebrated its 60th anniversary. When GE Aerospace's then-CEO Jeff Immelt attended the celebration, Edison Silva was tapped to be his guide. "I was there by his side so we could start the engine," Silva recalls. "He asked me 'Is this it?' and I replied 'Yes! And it starts like this.'"

A Test Site Grows at Três Rios

As the Celma facility developed more sophisticated testing protocols demand for its services surged. In 2016, Silva was tapped to develop an additional testing facility, the Três Rios test cell, which he managed for two years, from initial design to construction.

When it opened in 2018, Três Rios became the third Celma test cell and new regional hub for testing high-demand CFM LEAP and GEnx engines. The Rio test cell continues to play a crucial role as a testing site for these same platforms, as well as CF6, CFM56-5, and CF34-10E engines. "I believe that in two or three years we can be testing more than 400 engines a year in this test cell alone," Silva says of the Rio site. "Since Três Rios will be fully booked with LEAP and GEnx engines, we need this test cell even more to test additional engines."

Last year, the testing process underwent another leap when it upgraded to the new VME system for faster, more precise data acquisition and automated performance reports. The company's engineering team also developed a complementary system to check for data integrity, ensuring reliability down to the smallest measurement.

Behind all this sophistication lies a critical process of correlation, shaped by people with extensive experience of engine performance all around the world. Whether in Celma or at GE Aerospace's global testing reference site in Peebles, Ohio, test cells must align their readings across varying temperature and humidity conditions to maintain accuracy. "When we test an engine in the Brazilian summer, temperatures might be around 30 to 35 degrees Celsius," or 86 to 95 degrees Fahrenheit, Silva says. "Whereas they might test the same engine in Ohio at temperatures below zero. That's why we calibrate equipment here to correct these parameters and provide accurate results."

Witness to Aviation History

Ultimately, testing must evolve to meet the dramatically improved technology of modern engines. Where early aircraft had pure turbojets with minimal bypass air, today's modern turbofans derive more than 80% of their thrust from secondary airflow, enabling both the LEAP and GEnx engines to improve fuel efficiency by up to 15% compared to previous generation engines in their thrust classes. Such changes, Silva says, will be transformational to the world at large. "When I started in the aviation world, flying was for the elites only," he says. "A one-way ticket from Brazil to New York cost $1,100. Today, that's the cost of a round trip and you can find one for cheaper than that."

"I don't know if I'll make it to the 10,000th engine - we don't control our destiny - but I would love to be here to test it," Silva says.

At 75, Silva is better able to visualize transformative changes in aviation, having witnessed so many previous advances firsthand. He notes that GE Aerospace is exploring Open Fan engine designs through CFM's Revolutionary Innovation for Sustainable Engines (RISE) program, which aims to reduce fuel burn by up to 20% beyond current engines. And Silva envisions a future where even the energy source of flight might change: from stored fuel to wireless power transmission - a concept once dreamed of by Nikola Tesla himself.

"The feeling is that my mission is almost accomplished because I have not given up," he says. "I will go on. I don't know if I'll make it to the 10,000th engine - we don't control our destiny - but I would love to be here to test it. When you work with something you like, you don't see time passing. Today, I feel just the same way I felt when we tested engine number 1,000."

*CFM56 and LEAP engines are produced by CFM International, a 50-50 joint company between GE Aerospace and Safran Aircraft Engines.