Monday, 14 February 2011 Rolls-Royce, the global power systems company, has won a $2.2bn TotalCare® long term services contract from Emirates, covering Trent engines for 70 Airbus A350XWB aircraft. The agreement will bring the airline’s Rolls-Royce powered fleet of 128 aircraft, in service and on order, under TotalCare® arrangements.
Tim Clark, President - Emirates Airline, said: “Emirates’ 70 A350XWB aircraft on order will play an important role in our growth when they come online in the next few years. This TotalCare® contract with Rolls-Royce is an important step in ensuring our A350XWB engine life cycle costs are managed effectively and maintained to the highest standards. Already current users of TotalCare®, we look forward to maintaining this relationship with Rolls-Royce to drive additional operational improvements.”
Mark King, Rolls-Royce, President – Civil Aerospace, said: “We are delighted to sign this contract with Emirates, a valued customer with three Trent engine family members already in service. With this contract all of Emirates’ Rolls-Royce powered fleet are, or will be, supported by TotalCare® packages that add significant value and allow customers to optimise their operations.”
TotalCare® long term service agreements, in place on 90 per cent of all Trent engines, are designed to minimise customer financial risk and enhance operational performance and reliability, allowing operators to concentrate on their core business.
The new TotalCare® contract for Trent XWB engines comes two months after Rolls-Royce won a $1.2bn TotalCare® contract for Trent 700 engines powering 27 Airbus A330s and Trent 800 engines powering 21 Boeing 777s.
I'm just an SLF with a technical interest in such things but that entire press release is purely concerned with money and savings - bugger all about safety.
I'm travelling to the US in a couple of months from Perth and the only reason I'm going Qantas is the flight routing - when I go back to the UK it will be someone else. To me flying Qantas now means a knackered old plane [whom the engineers managed to keep going], dodgy RR engines [I never thought I'd see they day when I was worried about an RR sticker on the side] and the only thing holding it together is the chaps/chapesses at the pointy end who at least have bucketloads of time under their belt and have seen it all - that is until QF is dismembered and all routes replaced with JetStar and a crew who have just started shaving.
One more thing about the engines; I tell myself it's just a statistical abberation; it's a media beat-up; it's just bad luck - I have an Engineering Degree I can understand most of the technical issues - BUT......deep down you really start to suspect that something somewhere is very wrong.
Qantas as a brand is going down the gurgler very fast.