Of course the roots of MTU Aero En­gines go much fur­ther back than 1969, even right to the be­gin­nings of mo­tor­ized flight. The com­pa­ny has its pre­de­ces­sors to thank for much know-how and true pi­o­neer spir­it. But 1969 was a land­mark year in MTU’s his­to­ry. Back then, the en­gi­neers from MAN Turbo GmbH and Daim­ler-Benz joined forces to form a com­pa­ny that over the decades would be­come MTU Aero En­gines AG. Al­so the now leg­endary RB199 Tor­na­do en­gine, which formed the cor­ner­stone of ex­per­tise for de­vel­op­ing many of the en­gine com­po­nents made by MTU, had its start in 1969.

So for 50 years, MTU Aero En­gines has stood for the con­stant dri­ve to in­no­vate, to push the lim­its of tech­nol­o­gy—and with that to em­body a cul­ture of in­no­va­tion. Good things can al­ways be made bet­ter, an at­ti­tude that makes MTU a glob­al tech­nol­o­gy leader in key ar­eas. MTU high- and low-pres­sure tur­bines, tur­bine cen­ter frames and not least the in­no­v­a­tive man­u­fac­tur­ing and re­pair tech­niques used by MTU Main­te­nance are among the best out there.

Against a back­drop of the grow­ing mo­bil­i­ty re­quire­ments of mil­lions of peo­ple, the tra­di­tion of in­no­va­tion has long since be­come a must for MTU. Air­craft en­gines must be­come more eco­nom­i­cal, clean­er and qui­eter. As it has done in the past, MTU will con­tin­ue to have a ma­jor im­pact on en­gine de­vel­op­ment in the fu­ture, too.

This se­r­i­al of­fers a jour­ney through 50 years of in­no­va­tion at MTU, up to and in­clud­ing a look at the en­gine tech­nolo­gies of to­mor­row. Ar­ti­cle by ar­ti­cle. Hap­py read­ing!