Rolls Royce faces technical and legal battles

What a bad time for Rolls Royce:

August 2: Uncontained Failure on a Trent 1000 in Darby

August 30: Uncontained Failure at a Qantas B747-400 powered by RB211’s

November 4: Uncontained Failure at a Qantas A380-842 powered by Trent 900’s

Not to mention the more minor problems two B747-400 had with a RB211 (apparently a contained failure) and with fuel hydraulics.

And now: Pratt sues Rolls on patent infringement regarding the Trent 900 and Trent 1000 fan blades.

Let us recall: not long ago, in August, Rolls Royce filed a lawsuit against Pratt & Whitney, claiming that P&W would infringe their patented design for swept fan blades with their fan blades on the GP7000 and the PW1000G (and others). This case is due to go before a jury in the US in the first half of 2011.

Pratt & Whitney apparently fights back now, filing also a complaint with the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC), which could be very damaging for Rolls Royce, as if the ITC rules in Pratt’s favor, RR could get blocked to ship any more Trent 1000’s to Boeing. And if the UK courts come to the same conclusion, RR would also have a problem to ship the Trent 900 to Airbus.

But could that be Pratt’s real interest? Not only P&W and RR would be deadly enemies forever, also Airbus and Boeing would not be happy about P&W, as deliveries for the B787 and A380 to customers with Trent 900 and 1000 engines would be (further) delayed or in the worst case impossible. As a last consequence you could expect RR to go bankrupt.

So I doubt that this is what P&W is really looking for – even if Airbus goes ahead with the A320NEO and P&W developing a version of their PW1000G Geared Turbo Fan for it without Rolls Royce, the two companies will still be tied for centuries, as the V2500 will continue to be shipped until 2015 at least and aftermarket activities will continue  - say – twenty years plus.

So what could be the real goal behind the legal actions?

My guess: P&W wants RR to “cooperate” a little bit more on the narrowbody front:

RR officially states that reengining the current Boeing and Airbus narrowbodies does not make any sense. But it sounded a little bit different until RR was officially put out of the reengining game by Airbus. And as RR has no interest to participate as  a junior partner in the GTF, RR would be out of the narrowbody market at least until a clean sheet design either by Boeing or Airbus arrives. So one can imagine that RR will do everything (legal, of course) they can do to prevent the Airbus reengining by hindering and blocking P&W’s PW1000G to be one of the –NEO engines.

I do not know how the IAE contract between Pratt, RR and the other partners looks like, but maybe RR can block an engine offering for the A320NEO by P&W – or block order conversions from the V2500 to a PW1000G once the A320NEO is officially offered to costumers.

It will be interesting to see how RR will come out of these two battles:

-          the technical battle: RR has to regain confidence on the Trent 900/1000 – and maybe the XWB

-          the legal battle with P&W

The Qantas A380 engine failure - a disaster for Rolls Royce?

A first serious incident happened with an A380 – the first Qantas A380, registered VH-OQA, made an emergency landing in Singapore, not long after taking off from the same airport.

Pictures show that the aft part of the No.2 Trent 900 nacelle is missing. Eye witnesses from the ground said that there was a loud bang (or explosion) and trails of smoke after that.

All this points to an uncontained failure. In recent months we saw two other uncontained failures in RR engines – first a RB211, also with Qantas, but on a B747-400 and then the Trent1000 on a testbed in Derby.

If at least the Trent1000 failure and the -so far- suspected failure in the Trent 900 of the A380 are in any conjunction remains to be seen. At least it is not good publicity for Rolls Royce in a time that is not easy for the No.2 engine maker:

• Deliveries of the Trent 900 are, due to the production problems and slow ramp-up of the A380, not in numbers that were anticipated in the business case. Any profit from this engine program is delayed by years (the same is also true for the GP7000, of course).
• Even heavier probably , the Trent 1000 drags on profit margins. The 787 is late by almost three years – if the first delivery in mid-February will be met. According to the original ramp-up plan, there should have been around 200 B787 in service by now, maybe half of if powered by the Trent 1000. The performance inprovement programs, aimed to meat the promised fuel burn at the aircraft probably doubled development costs.
• Development of the Trent XWB is in full swing, costing a lot of money, too.

So one could suspect that RR is running into a cash problem. Luckily there are the Trent 700, the leading engine for the A330, and the V2500 and Airbus upping deliveries for the A320. But if these two "cash cow" programmes can save RR in the long run, if there would be a main technical problem in the Trent 900/1000 (and maybe XWB), is questionable. A fundamental technical problem, a desígn fault, could end up in the grounding of the whole Trent powered A380 fleet. Qantas grounded their fleet of six A380 immediately after the incident, Singapore would be hit heavy with eleven A380 in their fleet today, Lufthansa so far took delivery of four aircraft.

It is too early to call today’s failure a disaster for Rolls Royce (and subsequently, for Qantas, Singapore Airlines, Lufthansa and, if the worst comes to the worst, Boeing and all their B787 Trent 100 customers) – but the possibility is there…

Update: meanwhile is is obvious that an uncontaines failure happened. Pictures are showing damage to the wing - Singapore Airlines effectively grounded their fleet also. Officially, all flights are just "delayed" until the engines are inspected, but a 100% inspection of the disks for such a failure would mean to take the engine apart...

Update 2:
Just found the preliminary report of the uncontained failure in the RB211-524, which happened on August 30th. It can be found here.
The key observations are (quoted from the report):

• All of the turbine blades had separated from the IP turbine disk.

• Blades from the three LP turbine stages were either fractured through the airfoil section or separated from the disk.

• The LP stage 1 nozzle guide vanes were destroyed. The remaining LP nozzle stages were substantially damaged.

• The LP turbine bearing and adjacent phonic wheel and speed probes were destroyed.

• The IP shaft was severed towards the aft end.

This picture is obviously a part of a turbine disk that fell on the island of Batam - we will soon hear if it is also the IPT disk - at least all baldes are missing.

The Trent 1000 failure also happened in the IP Turbine. If now yesterday's failure also can be tracde back to the IPT, I would be happy not to be employed in Derby...