Cathay Pacific has confirmed that it was a fuel system component that failed during a flight to Zurich, as it works to get its grounded fleet of Airbus A350s back into service.
In a 4 September update, the Hong Kong carrier says it has identified 15 aircraft “with engine fuel lines that require replacement”. It is the first time it has named the faulty part since the incident.
On 2 September, a Cathay A350-1000 operating a flight from Hong Kong to Zurich suffered an in-flight failure of an unnamed engine component. Flight CX383 touched down at Hong Kong about 1h 15min after take-off.
Cathay then started a fleetwide inspection of its A350s and informed Airbus and Rolls-Royce, as well as the relevant regulators. All A350s are powered by Rolls-Royce Trent XWB engines. The -1000 is fitted with the XWB-97 version.
Cathay and Rolls-Royce have also confirmed the fuel system component is “first of its type to suffer such failure” on any A350 in service currently.
According to a report by Bloomberg, which cites unnamed airline sources, Cathay’s engineers have been tasked to look for “deformed or degraded fuel lines” on the A350s
The temporary grounding has led to a spate of flight cancellations, with Cathay’s regional network most affected.
Of the 15 affected A350s, Cathay says six have been repaired with new components, and are cleared to return to service. The Oneworld operators says it remains confident of getting the remaining nine jets back to service by 7 September, even amid reports that the airline might miss its target due to parts shortages in the global supply chain.
The airline will, however, cut more flights through 7 September – 11 more return flights – but does not anticipate any further flight suspensions.
The fall-out from the incident has been relatively slow so far – with very little schedule disruption or aircraft grounding – as other operators await further instructions from Rolls-Royce.
Japan Airlines, the only other A350-1000 operator in Asia, says it has inspected its jets during “scheduled maintenance opportunities”, as a precaution “based on our own judgment”. It has not cancelled any flights so far.
Rolls-Royce, for its part, has not issued a service bulletin relating to the fuel line component, but said previously that the replacement of the faulty component “can be completed while the engine is on-wing”.
