Rolls-Royce says tripling capacity to fix Trent 1000 engine problems

LONDON (Reuters) – Britain’s Rolls-Royce (RR.L) said it would add maintenance facilities and people to triple its capacity to fix problems with Trent 1000 engines that have grounded Boeing Dreamliner planes, but said this would not raise the cost of the work.

Turbine blades and compressors in Trent 1000 package C engines that power Boeing’s (BA.N) 787 Dreamliner jet have not lasted as long as expected, requiring extra inspections and forcing airlines to ground aircraft while the checks take place.

That has led to complaints from some of Rolls’s airline customers as they must lease alternative planes to fly in the key summer holiday period, putting extra pressure on the engineer to speed up the process.

Rolls said in a statement on Wednesday that it had a new inspection technique that meant it could check engines without removing them from the wings to help it meet a safety regulator’s deadline of June 9 for completing the checks.

About 30 of the affected aircraft, flown by airlines including British Airways, Virgin Atlantic and Air New Zealand (AIR.NZ), are grounded at any one time for checks, Rolls has said, and this is expected to peak at around 50 as inspections intensify.

Shares in Rolls traded down 0.7 percent at 821.4 pence, lagging Britain’s bluechip market .FTSE which was flat.

FULL RESOURCES

Rolls said it was using its “full resources” to address the Trent 1000 issue.

“We are drawing on resource from across Rolls-Royce and have redeployed engineers and other experts to address the issue, growing the team by more than 200 people,” a company spokesman said.

The financial implications of the problem had not changed from April, Rolls said on Wednesday.

Rolls has guided that the cash hit from the Trent problems should hit a peak of 340 million pounds ($450 million) in 2018 before falling in 2019, with the cost of the additional inspections covered by the company removing discretionary spending elsewhere.

Beyond checking the affected engines, which are known as package C engines, and of which there are 380 currently in service, Rolls has been working to develop a replacement part to provide a permanent fix.

It said this would be tested in early June and it aimed to have the replacement part ready to install by later this year, bringing forward the date from 2019.

“We fully recognize the unacceptable levels of disruption our customers are facing,” Rolls-Royce’s president of civil aerospace, Chris Cholerton, said in a statement.

“We are intensely focused on minimizing this and we have set our teams the challenge of doing everything we can to recover our customers’ operations as swiftly as possible.”

The engine maker’s efforts to date have not been enough for some airlines.

IAG (ICAG.L), the owner of British Airways, may have to ground five or six 787 Dreamliners with Rolls-Royce Trent 1000 engines this summer and Chief Executive Willie Walsh said earlier in May he was disappointed by Rolls-Royce’s response.