Rolls-Royce has opened what it terms an "Airline Aircraft Availability Centre" as part of a reorganisation of its support operations.
The centre is located at the Derby facility where Rolls-Royce monitors its in-service fleet of large commercial aero engines.
Tom Palmer, the civil aerospace division's senior vice-president of services, says Rolls-Royce's aftermarket support has so far been concentrated on engine health monitoring and co-ordination of MRO activities to keep equipment in operation. Now, the manufacturer wants to assist airlines with operating and managing the engines as efficiently as possible.
Palmer says engine overhauls represent around 4% of airlines' operating costs. But, he adds, engine operation has a direct impact of 65% of those costs.
New services include advice on aircraft deployment based on an airline's individual route network and prevailing weather conditions; line maintenance control; spare-parts provisioning; fuel-saving initiatives; and engine lease management. Rolls-Royce states that it will combine "analysis of digital data from our engines with those of our customers and partners to make dramatic improvements [in] airline economics, in terms of aircraft availability and fuel efficiency".
Certain services – such as fuel-saving initiatives – will also be available for customer aircraft not powered by Rolls-Royce engines.
Palmer says the manufacturer will provide a "much more complex and challenging service", utilising an increased volume of data from different sources, including aircraft, operators, equipment manufacturers beyond Rolls-Royce, and meteorological service providers.
Rolls-Royce has implemented a new IT infrastructure and partnered Microsoft to handle the increased volume and sources of data. The manufacturer has so far been collecting several million data points per annum – automatically transmitted from the engines – but estimates that it will in future handle 20 billion data points per day.
Specialists previously employed elsewhere at Rolls-Royce – such as engineers and leasing experts – have moved to the Airline Aircraft Availability Centre in order to facilitate the growth of services.
The build-up of the new facility was preceded by the establishment of regional customer service centres over recent years, in Abu Dhabi, Beijing, Derby, Singapore and Washington DC. These teams include engineers, maintenance planners, and spares and leasing specialists, and are able to handle an estimated 80% of customer queries, says Palmer.
Establishment of the regional support centres has, he adds, led to a 75% reduction in response times. It has also freed up capacity at headquarters to increase the range of services for airlines.
Palmer says a small group of customer airlines – including Norwegian and Singapore Airlines – has already opted to purchase additional support under the revamped aftermarket programme. The Scandinavian airline is "increasingly looking to Rolls-Royce to manage the engines completely" for its Boeing 787 fleet, the manufacturer notes.
Around half of Rolls-Royce's 2016 underlying revenue of £13.8 billion ($17.8 billion) was generated by the aftermarket activities.
Source: Cirium Dashboard
