The bill to fix Rolls-Royce’s (RR.L) Trent 1000 engine has risen by another 800 million pounds ($1 billion) as the aerospace group battles to reduce disruption to airline customers that have had to ground Boeing 787 passenger planes for repairs, reports Trend referring to Reuters.
The British engineer said on Thursday its operating profit and cash flow this year would come in at the bottom of its guidance - both at about 600 million pounds - as the cost of the Trent 1000’s problems rose to 2.4 billion pounds for 2017-2023.
Chief Executive Warren East said Rolls would spend more on parts and replacement engines to reduce the time aircraft are grounded while turbine blades are replaced.
“We want to get planes back into the skies faster, giving (airlines) much better visibility of when engines need to be serviced and better confidence in scheduling, and providing clarity to investors,” he told reporters.
He said the plan meant Rolls could keep its promise of reducing the number of aircraft on the ground to single digits by the second quarter of 2020 and maintain it at that level.
The Trent is one of two engine options for the 787, which can also be powered by rival GE Aviation’s (GE.N) GEnx engines.
Emirates President Tim Clark said in September he was “a little bit irritated” with reliability issues at Rolls and GE, adding he would not commit to ordering 787s as there was no stability in Rolls’ engine program.
East said the Trent 1000 problem was durability rather than reliability, but the company had struggled to fix one issue on blades on the TEN variant. The solution it had found would require additional investment in maintenance capacity across a number of sites and spare engines to reduce disruption, he said.