By Geoff Thomas and Tom Zaitsev
Rolls-Royce is kicking off the Paris Airshow with two major breakthrough deals for its commercial engines business.
The British company is poised to announce its first major Russian airline order with a deal to power at least ten Airbus A330-200s being leased by flag-carrier Aeroflot.
And on Friday, the company learned that it has been selected by French manufacturer Dassault to provide the first of a whole class of business aircraft engines that has been the subject of fierce competition and new developments from Snecma and Honeywell.
This is the first time Rolls-Royce has been successful in the Russian market and the first time it has been selected by the leading European business jet manufacturer.
The Russian national airline has chosen the Trent 700 to power the widebody twinjets being taken from Dutch lessor AerCap as a stop-gap ahead of delivery of its recently ordered A350 XWBs.
Aeroflot deputy general director Lev Koshlyakov says that a letter of intent due to be signed with Rolls-Royce at the Paris air show will cover 20 powerplants.
The aircraft are due to be delivered to Aeroflot on operating leases from the last quarter of next year before the 22 A350s arrive from 2014. Aeroflot has a further five options on A330s, and the deal would put Rolls-Royce in a strong position to secure the A350 business too.
Rolls-Royce declined to comment last night but the deal will come as welcome vindication of the engine-maker’s strenuous efforts over the last year to kick-start its Russian business.
The company last year head-hunted prominent aerospace executive Vladimir Raschupkin from Airbus’ Moscow engineering centre to lead its operation there.
When Dassault announced in Paris on Friday that it has chosen Rolls-Royce engines to power its new Falcon super-mid-size (SMS) business jet – the battle lines in the campaign to dominate the competitive marketplace for 10,000-lbs thrust business jet engines began to be drawn.
The engine – which still bears the R-R ‘internal’ designation of RB282 – will be all new and is likely to be produced in a ‘family’ comprising three thrust outputs – 6k, 10k and 11k.
This will be the first partnership between Rolls-Royce and Dassault in the business jet market although the Derby, UK, company is a leading supplier in the sector with a 34% market share.
R-R engines power more than 3,000 corporate aircraft. The total super-mid-size business jet market in which the new Falcon will operate is valued at US$40-billion over a 20-year period.
Both Charles Edelstenne (chairman and CEO of Dassault) and R-R’s CEO Sir John Rose, expressed delight at the new relationship, using words like ‘winning formula’ and ‘historic step’.
Snecma (Silvercrest) and Honeywell were hoping that their new 10k engines would be selected to power the Falcon SMS – and both companies were said to be ‘disappointed’ at the news of the marriage between Dassault and R-R.
It’s believed that Dassault selected the R-R engine partly on cost, partly on power-to-weight ratio and partly because of the cachet of the R-R name in the important US market.
n R-R is also revealing today that ILFC has chosen the Trent 700 to power up to five additional Airbus A330s – the deal is worth around $180million .
Source: Flight Daily News
