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Recently in Rolls-Royce Category



Pratt & Whitney Media Day is this week, which is a perfect excuse to post this excellent BBC documentary of Rolls-Royce. (Editor: Eh?) Bear with me, please.

We are not suggesting it's appropriate only due to the fact we can find no comparable documentaries on Pratt & Whitney, and not even because we are enthralled by such a revealing look inside the typically buttoned-up on Rolls-Royce (motto: "No comment. Full-stop. Forever.")

It actually is a timely peek inside Rolls-Royce on the eve of a Pratt & Whitney media day, where surely a major theme of press conferences and interviews will be the newly-sealed long-term relationship between these propulsion giants on narrowbody turbofans.

If you recall, last October Pratt & Whitney agreed to buy Rolls-Royce's stake in the International Aero Engines (IAE) consortium, which also includes MTU and Japanese Aero Engines Corp, producing V2500s for Airbus A320s. At the same time, Rolls-Royce formed a new joint venture with Pratt & Whitney to challenge another powerful joint venture -- the General Electric-Safran partnership in CFM International -- for the next-generation single-aisle turbofan market.    

Today, perhaps more than ever, the future of Pratt & Whitney and Rolls-Royce are tied closely together.

All that said, this documentary is so good any old excuse would do. Enjoy!
Japan Airlines Boeing 787 Dreamliner JA822J/N1003W ZA177

JAL take first (and second) 787 on March 25
Japan Airlines, second customer for the 787, will contractually take delivery of its first 787 on March 25 before a flyaway departure to Tokyo the following day. The final regulatory hurdle before delivery was cleared earlier this week when the Federal Aviation Administration gave final approvals to both the original Block 4 and PIP1 GEnx-1B engines. The two GEnx configurations will be interspersed among the early GE-powered 787 deliveries. 

There are strong indications that JAL will not take delivery of not one, but two 787s on Sunday, the program's first dual delivery. Delivery of Airplane 23 (JA822J) is firm at this point, while Airplane 33 (JA825J) may be slated for a late afternoon Monday flyaway as well, say program sources.

I'll be traveling to Seattle late Sunday for the delivery ceremonies and JAL interior unveiling on Monday.

Pratt & Whitney PW1500 certification trials
The PW1524G, Bombardier's CSeries CS100 engine, has begun major FAA certification trials with icing runs at the engine-maker Manitoba, Canada facility. Certification tests official began in mid-January with low pressure turbine stress tests. The engine has undergone more than 1,350h of full testing and nearly 250h under the wing of the company's Boeing 747SP test bed. As of last week, P&W had completed 2000h split between the PW1500G and MRJ's PW1200G engines covering more than 5,000 cycles. 

Trent 1000 reliability tops 99.9%
Five months after its introduction with All Nippon Airways, the Trent 1000 engine has topped a dispatch reliability of 99.9%, says Rolls-Royce. The engine-maker notes it is the best introduction of a new RR engine, which has flown more than 4,000h since its late October service entry.
Hazy Pane

SCOTTSDALE -- A busy first day at ISTAT is currently in the book and we had an opportunity to sit down with Air Lease CEO Steven Udvar-Hazy, who weighed in on a variety of topics. For a year-by-year comparison, make sure to re-read our interview with Udvar-Hazy from ISTAT 2011.

Air Lease Corp chief executive Steven Udvar-Hazy, a vocal advocate for Boeing's now-shelved New Small Airplane concept, says the airframer's strategy to develop the CFM International Leap-1B-powered 737 Max is intended as a bridge to a clean sheet design arriving in the middle of the next decade and "not a long-term solution".

A fierce battle is brewing between GE, Rolls-Royce and Pratt & Whitney to supply as many as 3,000 engines to power the re-vamped Embraer E-Jet family.

Steven Udvar-Hazy, Air Lease Corp chief executive describes the three-way contest as "a real dogfight". He anticipates as many as 3,000 engines could be at stake through a sole-source contract to power the Embraer 198, the moniker given to the conceptual aircraft by ALC.

Lufthansa and Air Lease Corp (ALC) are vying for launch customer status on Boeing's proposed stretched 787-10X.

If Boeing moves ahead to "launch the airplane, we could be a definitive launch customer for the -10, in tandem with [ordering] some -9s. So that's in the oven," says Steven Udvar-Hazy, chief executive of ALC.

Photos Credit Boeing & Embraer
Emirates Boeing 777-300ER A6-EGO

The existence of a 2011 request for proposal to GE, Rolls-Royce and Pratt & Whitney has now been officially confirmed, as Rolls and P&W have shared preliminary details of its planned 90,000 to 100,000lb thrust class engines to power Boeing's 777X concept.

General Electric, which is the exclusive engine supplier on the 777-300ER, -200LR and freighter, is offering the GE9X for Boeing's conceptual family.

This morning, Rolls detailed its conceptual engine, which it has dubbed the RB3025, exclusively to FlightBlogger and Flightglobal, which it touts will achieve better than 10% improvement in fuel burn against today's GE90-115B engine that powers the 777-300ER, and 15% better than the 777-200ER's Trent 800.
Rated at 99,500lbs with a 337cm (132.5in) fan for the baseline 407-seat 777-9X, giving the RB3025 a bypass ratio of 12:1.

The engine-maker says the current concept provides a low specific thrust and "excellent" propulsive efficiency, along with a 62:1 overall pressure ratio, which, if achieved, would be the highest OPR achieved in a commercial turbofan engine.

The engine builds off of the Trent 1000 and XWB engines, but Nuttall says the RB3025 is derived around its Advanced3 environmentally friendly engine (EFE) technology development programme, which includes a Trent 1000-derived core, lean-burn combustor, composite fan and advanced materials in the high pressure elements of the core.
Additionally, Pratt & Whitney also confirmed it, too, is offering a geared 100,000lb thrust class engine for the 777X in response to Boeing's information request:
Citing an excess of 6,000h and 80,000 cycles on its fan drive gear system (FDGS), P&W says its testing has "validated our analytical prediction that this engine architecture would be suitable to thrusts up to 100,000 pounds."

As the engine-maker "looks ahead to powering future wide-body applications" it plans to "scale the Geared Turbofan architecture to the required thrust levels".
While GE has not confirmed the details of its GE9X offering, the 777's incumbent has begun to begun to firm its own conceptual specifications to power the 777X, say those directly familiar with the engine-maker's planning.
Compared to the 115,000lb-thrust GE90-115B that powers the 777-300ER, the lower thrust 99,500lb and derated-88,000lb GE9X for the 777-9X and -8X, respectively, are enabled by the larger, higher-lift and comparatively lighter composite wing. The eCore-inspired engine would also feature a GEnx-style composite fan casing and third-generation Twin Annular Premixing Swirler (TAPS) Combustor, dubbed TAPS III, say those familiar with the engine maker's planning.

The 325cm (128in) diameter GE9X engine is believed to tout an approximately 10:1 bypass ratio, 60:1 overall pressure ratio and 27:1 high pressure compressor ratio, compared to the 42:1 and 23:1 pressure ratios, respectively, on today's GE90-115B.
Boeing says it's far too soon to say if one or more engine choices would be available on the 777X, as it has yet to be officially launched, but it appears that both Rolls-Royce and Pratt & Whitney are readying for a significant battle with GE to power the next-generation 777.

On Saturday, Airbus's A380 flying test bed made its maiden flight with the Rolls-Royce Trent XWB flying in the number two position under the superjumbo's wing. The milestone flight for the A350 XWB's powerplant also marked a first for the A380, which flew for the first time with different engine types.

The contrast between the A380's Trent 900 and A350's Trent XWB isn't nearly as stark as the Trent 900 under the wing of the A340-300 that served as test bed for the superjumbo's first powerplant back in June 2004.  The comparatively oversized higher-bypass Trent 900, one of two engine options on the A380 along with the Engine Alliance GP7200, dwarfed the CFM56-5C engines

The A380's Trent 900 first flight on the A340 came approximately ten months before the A380 first flew in April 2005. As a point of comparison, the A350-900 is expected to fly in early 2013, per Airbus's revised November 2011 schedule that pushed the type's service entry to the first half of 2014.

There's a great deal of speculation as to whether the higher-thrust 84,000lb Trent XWB could ever serve as a possible successor for the Trent 900 to power the larger 1000-seat A380-900 should it ever come to be. The possible groundwork may potentially be laid during this flight test program, as Airbus has already developed a prototype pylon that has a natural A380 wing interface and an A350 Trent XWB engine mounting.

Airbus flight engineering Pascal Verneau, who was interviewed last November in Toulouse demonstrating the Trent XWB flight deck interface, is shown in the video above and was part of the A380's flight this past weekend. Verneau joined pilots Terry Lutz and Frank Chapman, experimental test flight engineer and flight test engineers Emanuele Costanzo and Tuan Do for the 5h flight.


My complete set of photos of the A380 test bed and the Trent XWB are below the fold and include and up-close look under the engine's nacelle and flight test instrumentation.

TOULOUSE -- The familiar Rolls-Royce Trent 900 flying in the number two engine position under the wing of the first A380 has been replaced by Trent XWB as the engine-maker and Airbus are approaching the start of the powerplant's 175h flight test program. 

With 1,200h of testing accumulated across eight engines at test facilities in five countries, Chris Cholerton, R-R director of the Trent XWB programme, said specific fuel consumption tests are tracking ahead of expectation for typical early build engines and that it is the company's expectation that the A350's engine will be the "world's most efficient civil turbofan." 

The 118in (300cm) fan, designed to produce 84,000lbs of thrust for the A350-900, has been installed on A380 MSN001 with a multi-million dollar bespoke pylon that features on one end an A350 engine interface, and an A380 wing interface on the other. 
  
The heavily instrumented engine has already begun ground runs on the A380, and will relay 1,200 individual parameters, the most for a civil programme by Rolls-Royce, will measure and twice as many as any previous evaluation. The instrumentation alone adds 600kg (1,300lbs) of weight to the test engine.

Once the new majority-composite aircraft is flying, each engine for the A350 flight test program will be less instrumented than the certification engine as the 1,300lbs of instrumentation will be spread across the aircraft's two engines. Both A350 MSN001 and MSN003 will be fully instrumented test aircraft. 
 
On the A380's flight deck, test pilots have a mechanical link installed between the A380's throttle quadrant and the A350's, positioned at the rear of the pedestal. In the cabin of the A380, flight test engineers have live access to all the data streaming off of the engine, as well as access to the Trent's electronic engine control (EEC) software, which will be able to be changed in flight. 



While Airbus only says the Trent XWB flying test bed would make its first flight in the "coming weeks", the Rolls-Royce says a minor design change could slide that target further by "a few weeks".

During the engine's required 150h endurance testing, which wrapped up in September, Cholerton said R-R discovered damage on the engine's "rotating air seal that separates the [intermedia pressure] turbine from the back of the [low pressure] turbine"

"That's an issue we can easily resolve," he said, adding an updated design has already been manufactured. 

If Rolls opts to install the modification before beginning its flight trials the engine will have to be removed from the A380's wing.

"We may elect to change that prior to flight, because we can, it's simple to do," he said. "We can do it here in Toulouse. We can still be flying the flying test bed over a year ahead of first flight. We want to test the final production standard of part, that's a good thing to do for our maturity objectives."


HONG KONG -- Safe to say my body clock has no clue which way is up at the moment, but before I retire for the night, I wanted to make sure the photos from today's flight were shared. The video blog will follow tomorrow (most likely) but this set of 144 should give you a still sense of what the day was during today's All Nippon's first 787 flight from Tokyo to Hong Kong.
TrentXWB-MSN001-1_800.jpg
TrentXWB-MSN001-2_800.jpg
TrentXWB-MSN001-3_800.jpg
A well-worn A380 MSN001 rolled out a hangar in Toulouse, France yesterday sporting a newly installed Rolls-Royce Trent XWB engine. The powerplant, rated at 84,000lbs of thrust, will continue to advance Rolls-Royce's certification program for the new engine, which will eventually power the Airbus A350 XWB. The 118in (300cm) diameter fan of the Trent XWB-84 is only slightly larger than that of the three 116in (294cm) Trent 900s that are flying along side the XWB-84.

A shrunken A350-800, whose service entry has slipped to mid-2016, will be powered by a 75,000lb Trent-75, though the type has seen a steady flow of customers away from the variant.

For the A350-1000, a first engine run of its 97,000lb thrust fan is expected in mid-2014, with entry into service to follow three years later. The 2017 availability allows Rolls to incorporate technology from its three-shaft Advance3 engine design into the enhanced Trent XWB, though the improvement in performance on the A350-1000 has also drawn the ire of some customers.

The growing distance between airframe and engine commonality, which has always been a hallmark of Airbus aircraft family design, has frustrated customers like Emirates and Qatar Airways. Airbus says the -1000 will remain about 70% common with the baseline -900.

Enders, by his own acknowledgement, has made a "big jump" in technology with "a lot of unknowns" on the A350, which, at the insistence of customers, was required in 2006 to abandon its original composite wing and A330 metallic fuselage design. Enders' attitude about the -1000 is illustrative of the balancing act the airframer must walk between not increasing the complexity of its own engineering and production operations - thus driving up its cost - while managing the high expectations of its biggest customers.

Though Enders has drawn a line in the sand, telling Flight International the A350-1000 will not be changed to appease individual customers: "For us, that is the solution," he said. "We're not going to redesign it every half-year."

Photos Credit Airbus
All Nippon Airways Boeing 787 Dreamliner JA802A ZA103

At last week's 787 first delivery, Satoru Fujiki, an All Nippon Airways senior vice president, told reporters that the performance shortfall on the early deliveries would slot the aircraft into a role of regional missions, rather than long-range international flights, which will be flown with later built aircraft.

"The early 787s are actually much heavier than later-coming deliveries," he said. "So, for those aircraft we have taken an option to introduce those aircraft for domestic short haul and regional operations."

The comment was the first direct acknowledgement by ANA about the impact of excess structural weight the early 787s on the mission profile identified for the aircraft. Boeing has always maintained it would meet customer performance guarantees, though it was the clearest indication that weight gain would define the mission of the early aircraft.

The early deliveries, including Airplanes Eight and 24, are configured with twin Package A Rolls-Royce Trent 1000s with 64,000lbs of thrust and 264 seats for early domestic operations and will be updated to 222 seats when the missions expand regionally. 

With the certified MTOW capped for each airframe, the growth in the operating empty weight (OEW) of the aircraft eats into the possible traffic load for each flight, however, with a smaller requirement for items such as catering and fuel in short-medium haul operations, the required fuel for a long-range mission is traded for increased payload and a higher passenger capacity. For ANA, a shorter cruise phase in domestic and regional operations lessens the impact of carrying the excess structural weight over long distances. 

A recent report now provides some hard figures about the current weight of the aircraft. Aspire Aviation, which published a comprehensive report on the 787's performance Monday, writes:
According to Aspire Aviation's two sources at the US airframer, the first 787 prototype, dubbed ZA001 which carries the registration N787BA, is 9.8 tonnes (21,500 lbs) overweight, a significant figure when considering the aircraft's specific maximum zero fuel weight (MZFW) of 161,025 kg (355,000 lbs).

Line number 7 to 19 (LN7-LN19), the same sources confirm, are considerably less overweight at 6.1 tonnes (13,500 lbs). Line number 20 (LN20), the first 787 to feature increased maximum take-off weight (MTOW) from 219,539 kg (484,000 lbs) to 227,930 kg (502,500 lbs) to recover some of the payload/range capabilities lost owing to the overweight issue, is around 4 tonnes (8,800 lbs) overweight.

Line number 34 (LN34), dubbed ZA380 and the first 787 earmarked for China Southern Airlines, along with LN50 for Ethiopian Airlines, are block points for further weight reductions.

Line number 90 (LN90) will be the first 787-8 meeting the aircraft's original weight target with no overweight issue, the sources say.
The 21,500lb figure for ZA001 further confirms the same figure published in the Airbus 787 Dossier in December 2008, but the 13,500 and 8,800lb figures are the first public concrete estimates of the aircraft's structural weight gain. The figures also point to progress being made in the operating empty weight reduction of the aircraft, however the increased maximum takeoff weight is intended, in part, to regain the lost performance.

ANA announced today it would begin long-range 787 operations connecting Tokyo's Haneda Airport and Frankfurt, Germany on January 21, 2012 with its staggered business and economy 158-seat configuration. The airline's first long-range aircraft, which is expected by year's end will feature the higher thrust Package B engines, and is likely to be either Airplane 40 or 41, which will benefit from Boeing's third block point improvement planned for implementation starting with Airplane 34.

The increase in MTOW, allows for a higher structural payload to be carried, which can be accomplished by reinforcing the structure of the aircraft or adding load allieviation technologies that move lift across the wing to accommodate higher weight. Though it remains unclear how much the increase in operating empty weight is contained in the increased in MTOW.

Air Lease CEO Steven Udvar-Hazy told this page in March at ISTAT: "My gut feeling is that the airplanes will always be heavier, and they'll just have more power and they'll just increase the max takeoff weight and say we still meet the spec. It's just going to become a heavier more powerful animal."
787 First Delivery Header


EVERETT -- With Saturday's first flight of Airplane 24, ZA103, registered JA802A, Rolls-Royce marked an important milestone, the first flight of the Package B Trent 1000 engine on a production aircraft, confirms program vice president and general manager Scott Fancher.
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UPDATE: Boeing and Rolls-Royce clarified earlier inaccurate remarks that said the Package B engines had flown on Airplane 24. That is, in fact, not the case and it looks like the Package B engines won't deliver until November or December ahead of the January start for ANA's long-haul international service to Frankfurt.
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Certification of the Package B engine, expected soon, incorporates a revised six-stage low pressure turbine (LPT) design, high-aspect-ratio blades, relocation of the intermediate-pressure (IP) compressor bleed offtake ports and a fan outlet guide vanes with improved aerodynamics. The updated engine will bring specific fuel consumption to within 1% of the original specification.

ANA and Boeing declined to comment on the delivery timing of the second 787 to ANA, though several program sources point a handover in the second half of October. 

At June's Paris Air Show, Rolls-Royce expected ANA's fifth 787 to be powered by the Package B engine and would inaugurate international long-haul service, though ANA senior vice president Satoru Fujiki said the second aircraft will delivered in its short to medium-haul configuration.

Video Courtesy Matt Cawby

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