Rolls-Royce has announced an order from Delta Air Lines for its Trent-family engines worth an estimated £3.2bn ($5bn).
The engines are expected to power 50 new aircraft for the US-based carrier, comprising both Trent XWB engines for 25 Airbus A350s and Trent 7000s for 25 A330neo aircraft.
The contract will also see Delta make long-term use of the manufacturer’s Totalcare service support offering.
Delta is in the process of replacing its older generation Boeing 747 and 767 aircraft with a combination of Airbus A350 and A330, starting in 2017 and 2019 respectively.
The BBC has reported that Delta chose Airbus aircraft over Boeing’s next-generation 787 Dreamliner, after Airbus committed to “delivering its latest A330neo in 2019 ahead of Boeing’s 787.”
This is another blow to Boeing, with the company’s Dreamliner having already suffered a number of technical issues delaying its initial production, followed by the aircraft’s grounding last year due to fires thought to be caused by malfunctioning lithium-ion batteries.
Chief executive of Rolls-Royce, John Rishton commented that the deal not only strengthened a relationship with a long-standing customer, but was further evidence of the “success of the Trent XWB in the market” and represented a “powerful vote of confidence” in its newly-launched Trent 7000.
Rolls-Royce claim that the Trent XWB is the world’s most efficient large civil aero engine, as well as the fastest-selling widebody engine ever with more than 1,500 engines already sold, and it is due to power the first A350 XWB (extra widebody) into service later this year.
Launched earlier this year, the Trent 7000 is the exclusive engine of the new A330neo and has currently been selected to power a total of 152 aircraft.
The Trent 7000 brings together experience from the Trent 700, the engine of choice for the current A330; architecture from the Trent 1000-TEN, the latest version of the Trent 1000 engine and technology from the Trent XWB.
You can watch a video showing the maiden flight of Airbus’ A350 aircraft powered by Rolls-Royce Trent XWB jet engines below :
