OFSO - I'm ex-RR.
As you say they have a 24/7 Ops centre staffed by engineers continually monitoring the health of any engines they monitor (I'm not familiar with which engines they cover in addition to 8/9/1000 series Trents). However, I cant be 100% as I didnt have much to do with post-production but I seem to recall them saying that they only proactively monitor those that take out a monitoring contract but passively monitor all engines.
As above they primarily monitor engine health to determine when proactive preventative maintenance is required and gather data for engine development and future projects, however, an in-flight engine abnormality/part failure on any engine with the data transmitters will alert the Ops room who will then alert the operator and, if neccesary, dispatch and engineering team to meet the aircraft.
Their claim to fame for customer service being when they had a long-haul flight alert the RR Operations Centre for abnormal in-flight vibration, above normal but below the safety limit, and because they received the alert on engines they had a line maintenance contract for they had engineers waiting on ramp when the aircraft arrived with the neccesary parts required to do the works. Aircrew had no idea that they'd had an issue as RR monitoring had allowed the engineers to intervene before the vibration had even reached the EICAS alert limit.
The engineers are also able to remotely adjust the FADEC settings to help deal with in-flight problems.
Last edited by Burnie5204; 10th Oct 2013 at 06:49.