Surging sales of the Airbus A350XWB – plus a surprise resurgence in demand for the A330 – has given Rolls-Royce a full order book for its Trent engine range.
And much of the demand is coming from the Gulf region. Rolls-Royce’s biggest-ever airline engine order is the recent $5.4 billion deal to fit Trent XWBs to the 80 A350XWBs that Qatar Airways ordered in June. Indeed, despite its delayed launch, the A350 is proving a match for the Boeing 787 in sales terms. Kuwait-based leasing company ALAFCO also ordered 12 A350XWBs in June – some of these are likely to be for Yemenia of Yemen. Leasing giant ILFC ordered 20 more aircraft just before the Dubai Show, for delivery from 2014.
“We’re still the only engine on the aircraft, so 100% of A350 business is ours,” says Mick Forey, Rolls-Royce’s senior vice-president, airlines. He says competitor offerings such as GE’s GEnx cannot match the upper reach of the Trent XWB’s power output – up to 92,000lb of thrust – needed to equip the largest A350XWB models. “We designed the engine to be bigger than the aircraft needed – we had bigger eyes than the other guys, says Forey.
Rolls shares its business on the A330 with GE and Pratt & Whitney, but a sudden surge in sales for the older Airbus twinjet has provided some welcome Trent 700 sales. “This year we’ve sold 116 ship sets of engines for the A330,” says Forey. “That’s our best-ever year for the type.”
While Rolls-Royce has about half of the total A330 business, much of this is in the Middle East – “Seven out of eight Middle East A330 operators have selected Trent 700,” says Forey. These include Emirates, the largest A330 user with 29 aircraft, and Etihad, which has ordered three A330-200F cargo versions.
With Trent selling well in the long-haul market and the IAE V2500, in which Rolls-Royce has a 32.5% stake, covering the short-haul market, Forey says the company is now focusing on the next generation of aircraft engines. These will need to be considerably ‘greener’ than current powerplants, in line with objectives set by the Advisory Council for Aerospace Research in Europe (ACARE), in which Rolls-Royce is a partner.
ACARE has called for a 50% reduction in CO2 emissions per passenger-kilometre by 2020, and a 80% cut in NOx emissions in a similar timeframe. This presents complex challenges - given current thinking, cutting CO2 on an aero engine is likely to increase NOx, while reducing noise is likely to increase CO2.
The ideal solution has not yet been decided, Forey says. Initiatives such as Rolls’ Environmentally Friendly Engine (EFE) programme, P&W’s Geared Turbofan (GTF) and open rotor proposals are all in play. “Some of this technology is intriguing, and we are keeping an open mind,” says Forey. Entry into service for next-generation engines will be around the end of the next decade at the earliest, and the longer the timescale, the more likely that a more radical solution such as open rotor will come o the fore.
“The disadvantage of open rotor is that it needs to be developed and tested – so a later timescale would be better.” In the meantime, he believes the job is to keep the environmental debate going. “Aviation is only responsible for 3% of man-made CO2 emissions. We’re not the cause – but we take ourselves seriously.” Forey says.
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Source: Flight Daily News
