Engine Powers About 25 Percent Of Boeing's Dreamliner Fleet

In its 2017 Full Year results released on March 7, 2018, Rolls-Royce outlined its management of certain Trent 1000 engine in-service issues and the estimated costs relating to the implementation of the solutions to address those issues.

As part of the company's ongoing inspection and testing of those engines, it has identified a need to carry out additional engine inspections to those previously planned. The increased inspection frequency is driven by the further understanding of the durability of the Trent 1000 Package C compressor, a condition that was highlighted earlier this year. These inspections will be supported by service management and flight operations guidance to airlines to be issued by the airworthiness authorities.

This will unfortunately lead to additional disruption for Rolls-Royce customers. There are 380 Package C engines currently in-service with airlines. This new regime does not impact Trent 1000 Package B engines or Trent 1000 TEN engines.

While the compressor technical issue was known at the time of the results, the requirement for more regular inspections will lead to higher than previously guided cash costs being incurred during 2018. Rolls-Royce is reprioritizing various items of discretionary spend to mitigate these incremental cash costs and our guidance for 2018 FCF remains unchanged at Group FCF for 2018 of around $645 million +/- $143 million.

"Our focus is on supporting our customers and doing all we can to minimise any impact on their operations," said Warren East, CEO, Rolls-Royce. "We sincerely regret the disruption this will cause to our customers and our team of technical experts and service engineers is working around the clock to ensure we return them to full service as soon as possible. We will be working closely with Boeing and affected airlines to minimise disruption wherever possible.”

About 25 percent of the 787 Dreamliner fleet is powered by this Rolls-Royce engine variant. This issue does not affect current production 787s, the Trent 1000 Package B, Trent 1000 TEN or GEnx-1B engines.

Boeing said in a statement that an existing EASA Airworthiness Directive for the Package C engine requires inspections of an intermediate pressure compressor blade at certain flight cycles. If a durability issue is found, the blade will be replaced. This is a known issue and we will continue to work with Rolls-Royce, our customers and the regulators to fully resolve it. Boeing is deploying support teams to mitigate service disruption.

"Safety is our highest priority. The 787 has safely flown more than 3.2 billion miles since entering commercial service in 2011," the planemaker said.

(Source: Rolls-Royce and Boeing news releases. Image from file)

FMI: www.rolls-royce.com, www.boeing.com