New engine gives its all on test flight

The first part of Boeing’s new baby to fly under its own power – the Rolls-Royce Trent 1000 engine that will power the 787 Dreamliner – has had its first flight on the company’s Boeing 747 test-bed aircraft.

And so undramatic was the event, that chief test pilot Phill ‘Pod’ O’Dell said that “we gave the engine a hard time for its first flight but it did everything we asked.
Normally at this stage we would have expected to leave the engine at fixed thrust, but we gained confidence so quickly that we used it to manoeuvre the aircraft.  We will now move quickly to aggressive operability testing”.

The reason for using the flying test bed at this stage is to validate the interface of the engine with the airframe and intake.
Sufficient altitude test data has already been gathered for engine certification purposes through ground-based testing that is able to simulate altitude conditions, including icing compliance, engine operability and in-flight restarts across the flight envelope.
n The first set of Trent 1000 engines have been sent to Boeing and these are currently being installed to support the 787’s roll-out next month.

Source: Flight Daily News