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Rolls-Royce’s Terrett: The Upturn Has Begun
Mike Terrett, president of Rolls-Royce’s Civil Aerospace division, likes the way the squigglies look on his 12-month moving average chart showing engine orders and engine deliveries. That’s because for the first time since September 2001, the line representing the number of engine orders jumped above the line showing the number of engine deliveries.
Accentuating the orders line was an $800 million engine order from Air China for Trent 700s, announced by Terrett on Monday; highlighting future deliveries are advances in key programs. Terrett says the Trent 900 engines, seen -- but not so much heard -- here on the A380, have about 500 flights hours, and the performance is turning out to be “at least as good as we expected, though what we expected was better than what we specified.” Terrett says there are 10 Trent 900s in Toulouse at the moment.
For the Boeing 787, Terrett says Rolls-Royce will begin building the Trent 1000 this year, becoming the fifth member of the Trent family. The engine will be flight-tested beginning in 2007 using a Boeing 747 powered by one Trent 1000 and three RB211-524C2 engines. Rolls-Royce is purchasing the aircraft and L3 will manage it.
For the Airbus A350, Rolls-Royce continues to work with Airbus to define the characteristics of an engine that Terrett says will “clearly not be a ‘more electric’ engine,” referring to the 787 engine’s replacement of bleed air systems with electric. He says the A350 engine will likely be a close derivative of the Trent 1000, with a slightly different sized core and a new name.
Regarding the opportunity to build new engines for Bombardier’s proposed C-series single-aisle jets, Terrett says the company, in consultation with IAE, decided to punt: “We couldn’t make sense of the market.” —John Croft
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