{"id":3913,"date":"2019-02-28T08:39:24","date_gmt":"2019-02-28T14:39:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/planesintheair.com\/?p=3913"},"modified":"2019-02-28T08:39:29","modified_gmt":"2019-02-28T14:39:29","slug":"rolls-royce-quits-boeings-mid-market-engine-race","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/planesintheair.com\/?p=3913","title":{"rendered":"Rolls-Royce Quits Boeing’s Mid-Market Engine Race"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

LONDON\n (Reuters) – Rolls-Royce dropped out of the race to power Boeing’s \nplanned mid-market aircraft on Thursday, saying it did not want to risk \nmore disruption for its airline customers by rushing out a product \nwithout extensive testing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The\n move strengthens a leading position in the high-profile contest already\n held by a transatlantic venture involving Rolls’ arch-rival General \nElectric, industry sources said,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Britain’s\n Rolls-Royce, which makes engines for large civil aircraft and military \nplanes, wants to avoid a repeat of the problems with its Trent 1000 \nengine that powers Boeing’s Dreamliner 787.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Chief\n Executive Warren East said he had taken the “very difficult decision” \nto withdraw from the Boeing competition because it couldn’t make the \ndevelopment of its new UltraFan architecture fit the timetable for the \naircraft.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Boeing\n has proposed launching a new mid-sized jetliner to fill a gap between \nthe narrow and wide-body aircraft, with airline operations beginning in \n2025.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“If\n you enter into service with an engine that is not sufficiently mature, \nthen you are almost inevitably going to run into lots of in-service \nissues, lots of customer disruption and lots of incremental costs,” East\n told reporters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He\n said, however, that Rolls was still committed to UltraFan, a major new \nfuel-efficient architecture that will power wide-body jets towards the \nback end of the next decade.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

CFM\n International — a joint venture between GE and France’s Safran — as \nwell as Pratt & Whitney are also potential suppliers for the new \nBoeing jet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pratt\n & Whitney recently re-entered the civil market for narrow-body jets\n and wants to expand to larger ones, but has been hit by industrial \nproblems.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

UNHAPPY CUSTOMERS<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In\n the nearer term, Rolls is still dealing with the costs and disruption \nof fixing Trent 1000 engines caused by the poor durability of \ncomponents.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“On\n this issue we have indeed turned the corner,” East said, although he \nadded that the level of customer disruption was still unacceptable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\n raised the Trent 1000 charge to 790 million pounds from 554 million \npounds at the half year, contributing to a full-year operating loss of \n1.16 billion pounds ($1.54 billion), and allocated another 100 million \npounds in cash to the problem.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The issue has damaged Rolls’ standing with its big customers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

British\n Airways owner IAG said on Thursday it would order 18 Boeing 777-9s, \nrather than a competing package from Airbus that industry sources said \nincluded the A350, which is powered by Rolls.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“I\n have been frustrated, largely with the performance of Rolls-Royce, not \nso much with Airbus,” IAG Chief Executive Willie Walsh said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

East, however, said Rolls had an excellent relationship with BA and put the choice down to IAG’s fleet requirements.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“I am totally confident we will be continuing to be a major partner with BA for many, many years into the future,” he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

East\n said that aside from Trent 1000, the rest of the business was \nperforming well, although the large engine deliveries of 480 fell short \nof its 500 target, in part due to the challenge of stepping up Trent \n7000 production.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Shares in Rolls were trading down 3.4 percent at 950 pence, underperforming a 1 percent drop in the FTSE 100.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The\n company reported a 8 percent rise in underlying revenue to 15.1 billion\n pounds and a doubling of operating profit to 616 million pounds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However,\n changes in Rolls-Royce’s dollar-pound hedge book had a significant \nimpact on its results, and were in part responsible for a reported \nfull-year loss of 2.9 billion pounds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

(Reporting by Paul Sandle, Additional reporting by Tim Hepher; Editing by Edmund Blair and Keith Weir)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Rolls-Royce dropped out of the race to power Boeing’s planned mid-market aircraft on Thursday, saying it did not want to risk more disruption for its airline customers by rushing out a product without extensive testing. The move strengthens a leading position in the high-profile contest already held by a transatlantic venture involving Rolls’ arch-rival General Electric,<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[798,797,89,799,2203,1397,868,1103],"tags":[747,591,2171,205,42,590,49,47,514,625,41,624,713,99,3068,463,335,207,2030,620,199,589,1567,2023,718,412,526,1288,2504,2505,712,1018,3613,793,527],"class_list":["post-3913","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-airbus-news","category-airline-news","category-aviation-news","category-boeing-news","category-finance-news","category-stock-news","category-transportation-news","category-travel-news","tag-747","tag-591","tag-2171","tag-205","tag-42","tag-590","tag-a350","tag-airbus","tag-airliner","tag-airways","tag-boeing","tag-british","tag-cfm","tag-dreamliner","tag-east","tag-electric","tag-engine","tag-france","tag-general","tag-iag","tag-international","tag-jet","tag-market","tag-mid","tag-new","tag-news","tag-pratt","tag-reuters","tag-rolls","tag-royce","tag-safran","tag-trent","tag-ultrafan","tag-warren","tag-whitney"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/planesintheair.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3913","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/planesintheair.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/planesintheair.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planesintheair.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planesintheair.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3913"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/planesintheair.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3913\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3915,"href":"https:\/\/planesintheair.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3913\/revisions\/3915"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/planesintheair.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3913"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planesintheair.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3913"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planesintheair.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3913"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}