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Old 4th May 2018, 00:19
  #111 (permalink)  
tdracer
 
Join Date: Jul 2013
Location: Everett, WA
Age: 68
Posts: 4,420
Received 180 Likes on 88 Posts
Gee Dee Vee, don't mince words, tell us how you really feel
What Rolls is doing is common practice in the industry. The have a part that's failing prematurely. They analyze the problem with all the available data - since this is basically a 'wear out mode', they determine how many hours/cycles the part can take before there is a significant risk of failure. They put some safety pad on the numbers and say something like 'after xxxx cycles (or hours), inspect to make sure the part is still healthy - if it's not take it out of service, if it's OK you can operate another xxx cycles then inspect again. This happens on a regular basis, to every engine manufacturer (not to mention the rest of the aircraft), and 99.9% of the time it works fine and most people never even know it's going on.
This time, Rolls botched the analysis and the part is failing much faster than they predicted - whoops... Worse, they also determined that there is a resonance issue that can cause an engine to fail prematurely when operated for an extended period at max con power - double whoops. So they updated their analysis based on the latest data - and updated the requirements accordingly to maintain safety.

You apparently take issue with the process - well lets consider the alternative. Every time we discover an issue with an aircraft component, we ground the whole fleet until a fix is identified and implemented. We would all just stay home because no one would be able to fly, and everyone in the industry would be bankrupt or unemployed.
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