Rolls-Royce plans for new single-aisle, twin-aisle airplane engines

Rolls-Royce may not be at a cross road but it’s certainly at a fork in the road. RR sought to be a dual-source supplier for the Boeing 777X, competing with GE Aviation for the privilege; it was generally… Read More

Investigative focus on MAS MH370

The following will be areas of focus for the investigation of the Malaysian Airlines MH370 crash, involving a Boeing 777-200ER equipped with Rolls-Royce engines. These are standard areas of investigation and at this point, listing them here doesn’t… Read More

Odds and Ends: Repairing composites; More on Rolls-Royce; Boeing layoffs; Book Review; A380 assessment

Repairing composites: Aviation Week has a good article about repairing composites: specifically the Boeing 787 that caught fire at London Heathrow Airport a year ago. More on Rolls-Royce: Aviation Week also has a longer article to follow up… Read More

Odds and Ends: Rolls follows Pratt with GTF technology; Airbus’ challenge;

Rolls-Royce and GTF: Rolls-Royce today said it will pursue technology for its next big engine that follows the Geared Turbo Fan technology of Pratt & Whitney’s smaller design. Aviation Week has this story and Bloomberg has this one…. Read More

Repost: Pratt & Whitney GTF program update at PNAA conference, plus Q&A PW, RR and GE

Due to technical issues we don’t begin to understand, the PW GTF engine program update didn’t display the videos, only the links. We are re-posting to correct the situation because we couldn’t fix it within the original post…. Read More

Rolls-Royce Trent engines program update at PNAA conference

Bill Boyd, senior vice president of Rolls-Royce, provided a program update of its Trent engines that are being developed for the Airbus A350 XWB. He appeared on a panel with GE Aviation and Pratt & Whitney. He appeared… Read More

Updating the A380: the prospect of a neo version and what’s involved

Recent headlines and this column report that Airbus is considering re-engining the popular A330 with GE Aviation GEnx or Rolls-Royce Trent 1000-TEN power plants. A New Engine Option and other changes would improve the A330’s economy by an… Read More

Looking ahead to 2014

Here’s what to look for in 2014 in commercial aviation. Airbus A350 XWB: The high-profile A350 XWB program continues flight testing this year. Entry-into-service has been a sliding target. The program is running about 18 months behind original… Read More

A330neo prospect gains traction

Note: The following was distributed to our e-mail list December 23. Last week, American Airlines (as predicted) swapped the A350-800s for A350-900s. The possibility of Airbus launching an A330 new engine option appears to be gaining ground. Our… Read More

Airbus, engine OEMs make the case for A340 future

Airbus held a summit December 4 for stakeholders in the A340 to explain how there continues to be life after production ended and despite being a four-engined airplane in a two-engine world. Key to the future of this… Read More