Rolls-Royce, airlines grapple with more Dreamliner engine issues

LONDON / Reuters

Rolls-Royce requires more money and more inspections to fix problems with Trent 1000 engines on Boeing 787 Dreamliner planes, leading to further disruption for airlines and testing relations between Rolls and its customers.
Problems with engine turbine blades wearing out sooner than expected have hampered a restructuring programme prompted by the engineering company’s declining older engine programmes and plunging demand for oil equipment.
It said that more regular inspections are required and would lead “to higher than previously guided cash costs being incurred during 2018”. “We sincerely regret the disruption this will cause to our customers,” CEO Warren East.
Airlines have already been forced to alter schedules or lease other aircraft, but the latest issues could be more far-reaching.
The US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) plans to reduce the amount of time the affected planes can fly on a single engine after a failure of the other. The time limit would drop as low as 140 minutes, compared with the current window of 330 minutes, a source familiar with the plans said.
This effectively curtails operations across oceans or remote areas.
The European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) will also order increased inspections of affected engines in line with actions outlined by Rolls-Royce. Currently inspections must be carried out after every 200 flight cycles.
Rolls said it would reprioritise spending to mitigate the costs and kept its 2018 free cash flow guidance unchanged at about 450 million pounds ($643 million), give or take 100 million pounds.
It announced the need for stepped up inspections after liaising with authorities over a separate issue with the compressor on Trent 1000 Package C series engines. Rolls said there were 380 such engines in service.
Boeing said that about 25 percent of the Dreamliners flying were powered by the engine and it was deploying support teams to help to manage service disruptions.
General Electric engines used on some Boeing 787 Dreamliners are not affected. The need to inspect and repair Trent 1000 engines has led to an industry-wide shortage.
CEO East said Rolls was working with Boeing and airlines to minimise the disruption.
Norwegian Air, which has the engines in 15 of its 27 Boeing 787s, said it hopes to have inspected all of its engines before May 26 and that it had already found one problem that required an engine to be replaced.
“It’s disappointing and frustrating that our new aircraft don’t work the way they are supposed to,” spokesman Lasse Sandaker-Nilsen said. In March, Rolls said the cash hit from the problem should peak at 340 million pounds in 2018 before falling in 2019.