View Full Version : Trent 1000 losses
underfire
4th Aug 2018, 13:35
Rolls-Royce spent more than $721 million this year for issues with its Trent 1000 engine, which Boeing uses for some of its 787 Dreamliners.
That is in addition to the approximately $586 million Rolls-Royce expected in costs to fix its Trent 1000 and Trent 900 engines. The company estimates it will spend $1.6 billion in associated costs to fix the issues with the two engines from 2018 to 2020.
Rolls-Royce posted a $1.64 billion loss for the first half of the year.
This year's extra costs are a result of material issues that caused widespread, significant disruption to Boeing and its airline customers. Scott Hamilton of Leeham Aviation Consulting Co. said the engine issues have impacted Boeing's airplane production, as well.
"At one point at the Everett factory there were about five 787s without engines that were on the flight line and down at Charleston there were three or four without engines on the flight line," he said. "I don't know what kind of delays that were per their delivery contracts but it's very unusual to see airplanes without engines."
https://www.bizjournals.com/seattle/news/2018/08/02/rolls-royce-to-spend-1-6-billion-to-fix-engine.html?ana=yahoo&yptr=yahoo
Daysleeper
4th Aug 2018, 14:34
"I don't know what kind of delays that were per their delivery contracts but it's very unusual to see airplanes without engines."
He doesn't hang around Toulouse and Hamburg enough waiting for GTF's to put on 320NEOs, was about 60 at one point.
He doesn't hang around Toulouse and Hamburg enough waiting for GTF's to put on 320NEOs, was about 60 at one point.
Indeed, there's a longstanding history of such, going back to the first 747s which I recall seeing all at Everett with blocks hanging from them awaiting P&W JT9Ds. BOAC, whose first deliveries were delayed by a strike at the receiving end, made quite a bit from renting out the engines in place on their deliveries stuck at Everett.
I wonder if they are the same blocks, that Boeing keeps in stock.
tdracer
5th Aug 2018, 03:02
I wonder if they are the same blocks, that Boeing keeps in stock.
They are probably not the same concrete blocks that they used for the JT9D, but Boeing does have a collection of concrete block 'engines' that they use - different weights for different engine types.
It's not always an engine problem that results in their use - often times aircraft are 'built ahead' - rolled out well months ahead of the planned delivery date - to even out the production rate. They hang the concrete engines then push them out to a remote part of Paine Field until the delivery date approaches then they are brought back and the engines are hung (wide body engines are in the $12-$15 million dollar each range, so there would be a large inventory cost associated with hanging engines that won't deliver for several months).
msbbarratt
5th Aug 2018, 18:46
This loss has been in the pipeline for a while now; you can't pull a financial side-step to avoid having to fix a large fleet of in-service engines, they have to be fixed.
Assuming Rolls survives this (seems a safe bet), what will RR look like after all this is done? Poorer, certainly. But fitter? Lots of lessons learned? Expanded production / engineering facilities stood up in order to cope with the extra work? Dunno, but if they did then those might come in handy if they did get back into the small / medium sized engine game again. RR's Advance and Ultrafan look like they're pretty good, so it seems likely that their long term health should be OK. Provided they learn the lessons of this episode.
It's a bit like P&W and their travails with the GTF. We all know that once they've got that right, P&W will be minting it for a long time to come, so the current woes are worth riding out.
Concrete engines - reminds me of the Blue Circle* series of radar sets for RN / RAF aircraft. You know you've got delays when you get a second Mark of concrete radar (i.e. it's had to be upgraded).
*For non-UK readers, Blue Circle is a brand of cement here in the UK.
lomapaseo
5th Aug 2018, 20:31
..... engines are in the $12-$15 million dollar each range, so there would be a large inventory cost associated with hanging engines that won't deliver for several months).
and imagine the cost to store newly minted planes without engines that aren't paid for.
That's why there are only a few companies in the world that can afford development and build costs for large planes before the down payments roll in.
procede
6th Aug 2018, 07:43
He doesn't hang around Toulouse and Hamburg enough waiting for GTF's to put on 320NEOs, was about 60 at one point.
Boeing is seeing similar problems right now with the 737, partially due to problems with delivery of CFM Leap engines: https://www.seattletimes.com/business/boeing-aerospace/boeings-737-ramp-up-slows-as-unfinished-planes-pile-up-in-renton/
Turbine D
7th Aug 2018, 15:32
procede,
Boeing is seeing similar problems right now with the 737, partially due to problems with delivery of CFM Leap engines:
That is true. It is a different problem than that of RR or PW.
GE built a new assembly factory in Lafayette, Indiana to assemble the hot section modules of LEAP engines. Currently there are orders and commitments for more than 15,500 LEAP engines. Lafayette and other factories in the US and France have to assemble, test and ship 2,000 LEAP engines per year by 2020 to meet the demand as they work through the 7 year-backlog.
The current problem is obtaining the necessary technicians in the US for the Lafayette plant who are in short supply. Technical schools aren't graduating enough aviation oriented technicians these days. The type of candidates that are needed have a high school diploma and an airframe & power plant license issued by the FAA that allows them to work on jet engines. Besides new production the factories handle maintenance, repair and overhauls of engines.
As of early July, there were there were some 217 Airbus planes powered by the LEAP-1A engine and 166 Boeing jets with the LEAP-1B engine. They’ve racked up more than 1.5 million hours flying around in the world.
"At one point at the Everett factory there were about five 787s without engines that were on the flight line and down at Charleston there were three or four without engines on the flight line," he said. "I don't know what kind of delays that were per their delivery contracts but it's very unusual to see airplanes without engines."
About six years ago the Trent was happily flying on ANA 787s. There was a big RR flag hanging in the Everett factory 'deliverd on time' it said. Meanwhile outside on the flightline, in excess of twenty 787s sat there with concrete blocks hanging off their wings. GE were having trouble getting certification.
As has been said, its not unusual.
That is true. It is a different problem than that of RR or PW. ... GE built a new assembly factory in Lafayette, Indiana ... The current problem is obtaining the necessary technicians in the US for the Lafayette plant who are in short supply..
It's actually the same problem, differing only in detail. The management have failed to put in place the resources they need to produce their product.
For RR it's an R&D issue with the design. For P&W it seems an inability to overcome issues in an adequate manner. For GE it's not being able to get in place the staffing to meet their commitments.
All are likely down to budget constraints imposed from the top as if that is all there is to management. A result is the workforce required gets squeezed too much. Whoever put a new GE high-tech plant in the middle of a basically agricultural state, doubtless for cheap land and also low local labour rates, and then found they can't get high-tech qualified employes from Boston or California, or more likely hoping to poach trained and skilled employees from other companies, without noticing that such did not readily exist there. Whatever were their HR people at GE HQ in Boston/New York thinking ?
lomapaseo
9th Aug 2018, 14:59
Whatever were their HR people at GE HQ in Boston/New York thinking ?
that they could build today's product with yesterdays high paid labour
what ever happened to apprenticeships?, That's how I got into the business
procede
9th Aug 2018, 15:08
Whoever put a new GE high-tech plant in the middle of a basically agricultural state, doubtless for cheap land and also low local labour rates, and then found they can't get high-tech qualified employes...
Purdue isn't that bad... ;-)
underfire
9th Aug 2018, 15:37
another cost...Norwegian just picked up a used A380 wet lease for Gatwick-JFK because their 787's cant fly.
OldLurker
9th Aug 2018, 16:33
another cost...Norwegian just picked up a used A380 wet lease for Gatwick-JFK because their 787's cant fly.Gets them an extra 100 seats per flight (471 seats on this A380 vs 344 or 365 on their 787-9s). But the first three or four A380 flights had big delays, apparently because of overcrowding at JFK T1.
climber314
9th Aug 2018, 18:00
It's actually the same problem, differing only in detail. The management have failed to put in place the resources they need to produce their product.
For RR it's an R&D issue with the design. For P&W it seems an inability to overcome issues in an adequate manner. For GE it's not being able to get in place the staffing to meet their commitments.
All are likely down to budget constraints imposed from the top as if that is all there is to management. A result is the workforce required gets squeezed too much. Whoever put a new GE high-tech plant in the middle of a basically agricultural state, doubtless for cheap land and also low local labour rates, and then found they can't get high-tech qualified employes from Boston or California, or more likely hoping to poach trained and skilled employees from other companies, without noticing that such did not readily exist there. Whatever were their HR people at GE HQ in Boston/New York thinking ?
Or NOT thinking as the case may be?
Turbine D
9th Aug 2018, 19:36
Originally Posted by WHBM
All are likely down to budget constraints imposed from the top as if that is all there is to management. A result is the workforce required gets squeezed too much. Whoever put a new GE high-tech plant in the middle of a basically agricultural state, doubtless for cheap land and also low local labour rates, and then found they can't get high-tech qualified employes from Boston or California, or more likely hoping to poach trained and skilled employees from other companies, without noticing that such did not readily exist there. Whatever were their HR people at GE HQ in Boston/New York thinking ?
The Lafayette, Indiana factory was built there because GE Aviation gets quite a few technological personnel from Purdue University that is also located there. I might add that Rolls Royce has their only major US Jet engine facility located in Indiana. Indiana is more than agriculture, raising hogs and growing corn. With a 7 year order backlog worth $220 Billion, do you think for one moment there would be hiring constraints coming from GE headquarters in Boston? I don't think you understand the GE organization and the way it is run. GE has purposefully located facilities around the country, Ohio, North Carolina, Alabama, Kentucky, Texas, etc., to take advantage of available labor needs as well as lowered cost of doing business. The unemployment rate in the United States is nearing an all time historic low. In the airline business and the aircraft engine business employment levels and retirements tend to be cyclic. One of the major problems today is as lomapaseo indicated, lack of apprenticeship programs. So if you are wondering what the HR people at GE HQ were thinking, you might ask that question of airline companies as well:
Facing a Critical Pilot Shortage, Airlines Scramble to Hire New PilotsAnticipating a wave of retirements, airlines are increasing salaries and benefits to attract and replenish staffBy The Wall Street Journal
Robert Wall in London and
Andrew Tangel in Chicago
Aug. 8, 2018 5:30 a.m. ET
Airlines are boosting salaries and setting up training centers to combat what is projected to be one of the biggest-ever pilot shortfalls.
The dearth of pilots has long been forecast, but it is only now that airlines are being forced to act. Boeing (http://quotes.wsj.com/BA) Co. estimates that airlines around the world will need to recruit 635,000 pilots over the next two decades to fly the record number of planes being built (https://www.wsj.com/articles/airbus-delivers-record-718-aircraft-in-2017-beating-expectations-1516003411?mod=article_inline) and to replace the thousands of aviators expected to retire during that span.
“This is one of the largest hiring cycles for airline pilots” in history, said Tim Canoll, president of the Air Line Pilots Association, International, which represents around 60,000 pilots in the U.S. and Canada.
Following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in the U.S. and during the 2008 financial crisis, the aviation industry experienced a downturn and airlines consolidated. That made cockpit-crew jobs scarce and pay raises rare.
In recent years, travel has picked up (https://www.wsj.com/articles/airbus-reaps-rewards-for-rising-plane-production-1518681047?mod=article_inline), but the bench of available pilots hasn’t expanded enough to keep pace.
Some smaller airlines in the U.S. have had to scrap flights because they lack staff.
“There are simply too few pilots to operate all of today’s routes and with the coming wave of retirements, the situation will reach crisis levels soon,” said Faye Malarkey Black, president of the Regional Airline Association.
The Lafayette, Indiana factory was built there because GE Aviation gets quite a few technological personnel from Purdue University that is also located there. I might add that Rolls Royce has their only major US Jet engine facility located in Indiana. Indiana is more than agriculture, raising hogs and growing corn.
I think I'm possibly more aware of Purdue than you imagine. A university that used to run its own airline, Purdair, with DC9s (and before that DC6s - it even had the contract for the operation of Hugh Hefner's DC9). I think they did it because their sports teams had to travel so far to meet others. And thus I'm afraid the cornball comments, or as Thomas Hardy would put it, "Far from the Madding Crowd", stand. RR is at least in the more established industrial centre of Indianapolis, the longstanding Allison facility. Production plants do not need to be associated with research places, even the better known ones. Not for nothing are both Derby and Hartford in established engineering cities and regions.
With a 7 year order backlog worth $220 Billion, do you think for one moment there would be hiring constraints coming from GE headquarters in Boston? I don't think you understand the GE organization and the way it is run. GE has purposefully located facilities around the country, Ohio, North Carolina, Alabama, Kentucky, Texas, etc., to take advantage of available labor needs as well as lowered cost of doing business. The unemployment rate in the United States is nearing an all time historic low. In the airline business and the aircraft engine business employment levels and retirements tend to be cyclic. One of the major problems today is as lomapaseo indicated, lack of apprenticeship programs. So if you are wondering what the HR people at GE HQ were thinking, you might ask that question of airline companies as well:
All credit to GE for steadily, long-term, supplanting P&W as the premier US engine manufacturer, with very competent designs (well, as competent as a big fan which is only two-spool can be :) ). But I didn't say 'hiring constraints', I questioned an approach that looks to hire experienced high-tech production staff in, and to be paid at, cornball state levels, or to transfer them there from more sophisticated locations. Sorry, Lafayette, aka Hooterville, and mid-Indiana, but you are what you are. Yes, lack of apprentice training (and I notice here we are speaking about apprentices, not university grads) is an issue apparent worldwide, it goes with the desire not to train anybody ab-initio but to poach them from others, and yet still pay at local labour rates and with poor benefits which the people from Boston HQ would never put up with. Which has worked short term for a generation but now is increasingly an issue.
tdracer
11th Aug 2018, 04:53
Yes, lack of apprentice training (and I notice here we are speaking about apprentices, not university grads) is an issue apparent worldwide, it goes with the desire not to train anybody ab-initio but to poach them from others, and yet still pay at local labour rates and with poor benefits which the people from Boston HQ would never put up with. Which has worked short term for a generation but now is increasingly an issue.
The problem is more fundamental than that. Our 'elites' have created a generation that believes you are a failure if you don't go to college, and dismiss mechanical/manual labor jobs as failures. So we have millions of new college graduates with degrees it literature, women's studies, etc. that have minimal real world value to justify their massive college price tag - graduates who's real world skill set is good for little more than flipping burgers, while there is a critical shortage of skilled machinists, as well as plumbers, electricians, auto mechanics, etc. There is a vocational-technical school a few miles from where I live - they have trouble filling their classes while the local universities are bursting at the seams with humanities majors.
It's gotten a little better the last few years - emphasis on students going into STEM fields, but there are a lot of people who don't have the mental makeup and/or skillsets to be a good engineers - but have talents that would allow them to become very successful in vocational-technical fields. As a society, we've stopped valuing the people who actual make or fix stuff. That needs to change...
msbbarratt
11th Aug 2018, 07:06
RR recognised the need for a strong education programme long ago, and has a centre in Derby specifically for it. It's pretty good and competition to get on their apprenticeship scheme is strong. Quite a few large companies do this kind of thing here in the UK, having realised that mainstream education is no longer focused on churning out youngsters with good technical skills.
Apprenticeships are increasingly seen as a better idea compared to degrees. Getting on to a good apprenticeship scheme means you're earning a salary, building up pension, getting a college education, and being tailored to be a very useful employee with excellent prospects. Going to university means being saddled with £40k+ debt, 3, 4 years less pension, likely still learning on the job and possibly starting underneath someone who did the apprenticeship.
Daysleeper
11th Aug 2018, 08:22
RR recognised the need for a strong education programme long ago, and has a centre in Derby specifically for it. It's pretty good and competition to get on their apprenticeship scheme is strong. Quite a few large companies do this kind of thing here in the UK, having realised that mainstream education is no longer focused on churning out youngsters with good technical skills.
Apprenticeships are increasingly seen as a better idea compared to degrees. Getting on to a good apprenticeship scheme means you're earning a salary, building up pension, getting a college education, and being tailored to be a very useful employee with excellent prospects. Going to university means being saddled with £40k+ debt, 3, 4 years less pension, likely still learning on the job and possibly starting underneath someone who did the apprenticeship.
Of course in the UK Rolls Royce now has to pay somewhere about £10 Million in Apprenticeship Levy to the govt unless it runs a large apprenticeship program. They did anyhow but it's definitely a poke in a particular direction for large companies.
Thaihawk
11th Aug 2018, 08:41
RR recognised the need for a strong education programme long ago, and has a centre in Derby specifically for it. It's pretty good and competition to get on their apprenticeship scheme is strong. Quite a few large companies do this kind of thing here in the UK, having realised that mainstream education is no longer focused on churning out youngsters with good technical skills.
Apprenticeships are increasingly seen as a better idea compared to degrees. Getting on to a good apprenticeship scheme means you're earning a salary, building up pension, getting a college education, and being tailored to be a very useful employee with excellent prospects. Going to university means being saddled with £40k+ debt, 3, 4 years less pension, likely still learning on the job and possibly starting underneath someone who did the apprenticeship.
This mindset was well in place when I was an apprentice in the 1970s in a manufacturer of aircraft equipment in the UK. Office staff had far better T&Cs than the skilled shop floor personnel, and said shop floor personnel could earn more in non-skilled jobs outside the engineering industry. At one point in the company I worked for a fork-lift driver was on better pay than a fully-skilled fitter.
No wonder there is a dearth of personnel in the aviation engineering industry.
RufusXS
21st Sep 2018, 15:23
Rolls-Royce Unveils Details Of Trent 1000 Fixes And Testing | Commercial Aviation content from Aviation Week (http://m.aviationweek.com/commercial-aviation/rolls-royce-unveils-details-trent-1000-fixes-and-testing)
I'm always a little cautious about PR releases written, like this one, in the Future tense. RR "is completing development" just sounds like something written to try to tide things over, as opposed to "has completed development", which tells us they have actually got the fix.
matkat
21st Sep 2018, 16:10
This mindset was well in place when I was an apprentice in the 1970s in a manufacturer of aircraft equipment in the UK. Office staff had far better T&Cs than the skilled shop floor personnel, and said shop floor personnel could earn more in non-skilled jobs outside the engineering industry. At one point in the company I worked for a fork-lift driver was on better pay than a fully-skilled fitter.
No wonder there is a dearth of personnel in the aviation engineering industry.
And this crap is still going on check some of there adverts on aviationjobsearch €16 an hour for highly skilled fitters for ryanair in Lithuania and €32 for a type rated licensed B737 engineer as you rightly say the T&Cs nowadays are atrocious.
TURIN
21st Sep 2018, 18:10
No wonder there is a dearth of personnel in the aviation engineering industry.
Indeed, it was ever thus. I remember wondering if I'd done the right thing when I looked in the company carpark full of Porsches and this years model of hot hatch. All driven by very smartly dressed cabin crew.
glad rag
21st Sep 2018, 23:34
And this crap is still going on check some of there adverts on aviationjobsearch €16 an hour for highly skilled fitters for ryanair in Lithuania and €32 for a type rated licensed B737 engineer as you rightly say the T&Cs nowadays are atrocious.
plenty of gingerbeers from eastern Europe to depress the rate these days...
punkalouver
11th Feb 2019, 06:31
For those that are interested...….Rolls-Royce spends two billion dollars a year on R&D.
Rolls-Royce?s Cultured Pearl: Engine Maker?s Latest Bizav Entry | Program Management Corner content from Aviation Week (http://aviationweek.com/program-management-corner/rolls-royce-s-cultured-pearl-engine-maker-s-latest-bizav-entry)
RatherBeFlying
11th Feb 2019, 15:45
The North American pilot shortage got its start in the 80s as flight training became steadily more expensive as young people's wages stagnated, making for steadily fewer pilots looking for work at very poor wages, a product of a then long time surplus of pilots.