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Rolls-Royce Expected to supply A350 Engines
Airbus expects to sign up Rolls-Royce to provide engines for the new A350 “within four to six weeks,” according to Airbus marketing vp Colin Stuart. Like the General Electric GEnx, the launch engine for the A350, the Rolls-Royce engine will be a version of the company’s 787 powerplant, the Trent 1000. “We have been trying to close the specification on the engine,” Stuart says. “What they initially offered was not quite what we wanted in terms of maintenance cost and fuel efficiency.”
Rolls-Royce has told Airbus that it could deliver an A350 engine in 2010, but the GE engine will be available first. The Rolls-Royce offering will follow “months after — I’d guess 12 months,” says Stuart.
The A350 will use monolithic aluminum-lithium in its fuselage skin rather than the Glare fiberglass-aluminum laminate used on the A380. That does not indicate disenchantment with Glare, Stuart says: Aluminum is easier to handle and can be welded, and competition among materials suppliers means that Al-Li is significantly less expensive than it was when materials were chosen for the A380.
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