Emirates unhappy with Rolls Royce over A380 engines - report

Long haul airline Emirates said it was unhappy with performance shortfalls afflicting $6.1bn's worth of Rolls-Royce engines ordered to power a batch of 50 Airbus Group SE A380 superjumbos, Bloomberg reported.

Feedback on the Trent 900 engines indicated “technical issues” that need to be resolved before the first plane is delivered to Emirates next month, Tim Clark, the carrier’s president, said in Frankfurt on Friday.

“We have a new engine coming on and there are some issues with that at the moment,” Clark said at a media briefing. “We want the engines as promised in the contract.”

Emirates last year ordered 217 Trent 900s -- sufficient to power the 50 four-engine A380s, plus spares -- after previously purchasing GP7000 powerplants from an alliance of General Electric Co. and Pratt & Whitney for its first 90 superjumbos. The deal with Rolls included unspecified “quality improvements.”

Clark said Emirates will “hopefully” still take the first Rolls-Royce powered plane on Dec. 2 as planned, adding that talks are underway with the manufacturer on resolving the performance problems and whether it should compensate the airline.

London-based Rolls-Royce said in an email that it is “working with Emirates and Airbus to meet the planned entry into service of the Trent-powered A380 within the Emirates fleet”, Bloomberg added.

Clark said that officially deferring delivery of the planes was not an option since doing so would impact the model’s entire supply chain. Emirates is due to take 25 Rolls-powered A380s between now and 2019, plus 25 more from 2021.