Rolls-Royce Trent 7000 reaches milestone but has its issues

Last week, Rolls-Royce celebrated a “huge milestone” as it announced on Twitter that the Trent 7000 has cleared one million flying hours on the Airbus A330neo since 2019. But on that same day, TAP Portugal CEO Christine Ourmieres-Widener told AviationSource in Lisbon that “the engine isn’t performing”. So what are the issues? Rolls-Royce Trent 7000 reaches milestone but has its issues.

The Trent 7000 is currently active on six A330-800s and 82 -900s, with five more of the smaller aircraft version on order and 186 of the biggest A330neo. Virgin Atlantic is the latest operator of the type. The engine is an extensive update of the tried and tested Trent 700 that is available on the A330ceo. But it includes various new components that come from the Trent XWB series that are the exclusive powerplants on the A350. Components include so-called blisks, the turbine clearance control system, different fan blades, plus various changes to the engine core that give it a bypass ratio of 10:1, the highest of all Trents. Combined, they offer the 7000 a ten percent lower fuel consumption and a 6dB reduction in noise.

Unfortunately, the Trent 7000 hasn’t been immune to problems, although not on the same scale as those of the Trent 1000 and 1000 TEN that have cost the OEM billions to address. The issues

included higher wear than anticipated of the high-pressure turbine (HPT), intermediate-pressure compressor (IPC), and intermediate-pressure turbine (IPT) blades on Package B and C engines on Boeing 787s. Low-pressure turbine disks (LPT) were also suspect. It forced R-R to do nine part-redesigns, most of which were on track in mid-2020. The ninth (HPT blades on the Trent TEN) will only be available in 2023, which is two years later than originally planned. This is where the Trent 7000 comes in as it shares the same high-pressure turbine blades as the Trent TEN and will benefit from the same upgrade next year. By the way, the XWB also was not immune to issues either.