Rolls Royce share price suffers as it reveals engine setback
Rolls Royce said this morning it will take longer than expected to get its Trent 1000 engines back in the air after one fell apart over Italy earlier this year.
The company said that it has had to remove more engines than expected from planes.
Read more: Rolls-Royce: Engine issues still in focus after ‘storm of steel and iron’ falls from plane
It will now take until the second quarter of next year for the company to reduce the number of grounded aircraft to below 10.
“We deeply regret the additional disruption that this will cause our customers and we continue to work closely with them to minimise the impact on their operations,” it said in a statement.
In August a Rolls Royce engine on a Norwegian plane broke up over Italy.
Part of the Trent engine which powered the plane started raining down on locals in Fiumicino, a town by an airport near Rome.
The locals said that incandescent metal fell on them from the Boeing plane, which was headed for Los Angeles. It set clothes on fire, smashed up cars and caused damage to buildings, local press reported.
However it was not the first problems discovered with the engines. In 2016 – five years after it launched – a routine inspection in Japan found cracks in five of the £34m engines.
Read more: Rolls-Royce boss still cannot call time on Trent 1000 engine issue
In 2018, the company said it will spend £1.5bn fixing the engine’s problems by 2021. That figure was recently increased by £100m. Much of that is compensation for airlines who have faced disruption because of the issues.
Long-suffering shareholder in Rolls Royce took another hit today as shares took a 3.6 per cent hit, trading at 760.6p. They were worth as much as 1,271p in 2013 – an all-time high.