Rolls Royce has called the ongoing crisis with their Trent 1000 engines "unacceptable". The comments were made at a press briefing attended by Simple Flying in Derby yesterday. It comes after months of inconvenience and cost caused to airlines.

The Rolls Royce Trent 1000 engine crisis has seen significant disruption suffered by airlines. Cracks have been found in engine blades. These cracks are obviously dangerous, and as such many aircraft have been grounded while the flaw is rectified. The issue is the single biggest currently affecting the company, and as such is being treated very seriously.

Working intensely on the issue

Rolls Royce is working "intensely" on resolving the issue with the Trent 1000 engines. Rolls Royce’s Chief Customer Officer of Civil Aerospace, Dominic Horwood, told how: "We are clearly working intensely with our customers every day to support the recovery of their fleets."

He went on to add that the situation is unacceptable. "We deeply regret the disruption that we have caused our customers and the unacceptable level of customer disruption that we see across the fleet."

The solution

Rolls Royce is currently tackling the issue of the Trent 1000. In order to combat the disruption caused. "We are clearly working intensely with our customers every day to support the recovery of their fleets." Horwood added "It is intense. This is the activity that preoccupies us every day, as it should. But, I absolutely want to stress the focus this has, the intensity it has, the way that we feel about supporting our customers."

Rolls Royce has slowly been remedying the situation. Indeed, the company hopes that significant progress will be made to remedy the situation by the end of the year with Horwood claiming "we're driving to get to a significantly lower level of disruption by the end of this year. That is absolutely the focus with all customers."

What effect has the crisis had?

The Trent 1000 crisis has led to a number of operators being forced to ground their aircraft. This has led to huge costs for the operators concerned. While they have had to temporarily replace the aircraft, they have also had to pay compensation to customers for cancelled flights.

Indeed, we have seen British Airways frequently wet-leasing the Air Belgium Airbus A340 in order to ensure that flights are not cancelled. Meanwhile, Norwegian had to hire the Hifly Airbus A380 on a number of occasions.

Rolls Royce and Norwegian had previously reached a deal on compensation with a spokesperson saying “Norwegian’s long-haul operation has been disrupted by challenges with the Rolls-Royce engines on the Dreamliners. The Company has now reached an agreement with Rolls-Royce which will have a positive effect from the first quarter of 2019."

At the briefing, the manufacturer also hinted that is was in discussions about powering supersonic aircraft.

Do you think Rolls Royce is doing enough about the Trent 1000 situation? Let us know in the comments!