LONDON (April 17): Emirates picked Rolls-Royce Holdings to supply engines valued at US$9.2 billion for its next batch of 50 Airbus A380s, ditching an alliance of General Electric and Pratt & Whitney that is powering its first 90 double-deckers.
Dubai-based Emirates will buy 200 Trent 900 engines plus spares for the four-engine planes, on which the turbine choice was left open after a 2013 order.
Emirates President Tim Clark said at a press conference in London that engines for some of the 50 jets could be converted to more efficient types, called neo for new engine option, if Airbus Group NV opts to go ahead with an upgrade of the double-decker.
“As far as the neo is concerned we’ll await the deliberations from Toulouse,” the executive said, referring to Airbus’s headquarters in France. “I don’t want to suggest that the current aeroplane is not a really good machine.”
The world’s largest international airline has said it could order at least 100 more A380s if Airbus goes ahead with a neo equipped with engines that consume less fuel.
An A380 neo would need to drive efficiency gains of between 10 percent and 13 percent, Clark said. Airbus has yet to commit to the plan amid a dearth of order interest.
Emirates has around 60 A380s in its fleet, leaving about 30 more Engine Alliance GP7000-powered jets to come, plus the 50 aircraft that will now by powered by London-based Rolls.
A coup
Today’s decision from Emirates is a coup for the UK manufacturer, which already had the largest spread of airline operators for its A380 engine but lacked a presence with by far the most prolific buyer of the world’s largest passenger plane.
The final assembly of the engines will happen in Singapore and the first 25 are due for delivery between 2016 and 2018.
Airbus has relied on Emirates for almost half the orders for a flagship model that has won no new airline customer since 2012.
While the double-decker suits the Gulf giant’s strategy of funnelling passengers from Europe and North America to Asia, Africa and the Middle East via its home hub, other airlines have employed the plane as a top-end product in smaller numbers.
Job cuts
Customers for Trent 900-powered A380s include British Airways, Deutsche Lufthansa and Qantas Airways.
Qantas suffered a mid-flight explosion of a Trent 900 in 2010, in the most serious incident yet involving an A380, though the aircraft landed safely and nobody was injured.
Rolls-Royce, the second-largest aircraft-engine maker behind Fairfield, Connecticut-based GE, announced 2,600 job cuts last year, with the civil engines division hardest hit.
The move followed the end of development work on the Trent 1000 and XWB engines that power the Boeing 787 and Airbus A350.
Today’s deal won’t affect job cuts already announced but will secure positions for the future, Rolls-Royce Chief Executive Officer John Rishton said in an interview.