News

British Airways latest to be hit by B787 Dreamliner engine problems

9 May 2018 by Tom Otley
BA Dreamliner

British Airways is the latest carrier which is seeing disruption because of problems with the Rolls Royce Trent 1000 engines for some of its B787 Dreamliner fleet.

As reported previously here, Virgin Atlantic has had to bring an A340-600 back into service to cover its schedule.

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In that case, Virgin has had to bring back the previously retired aircraft because of the engine issues on the B787 fleet, and, in addition, has also been forced to lease Air Berlin A330s.

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Meanwhile, Norwegian, operating from London Gatwick, currently has a charter aircraft (HiFLy) operating one of its two daily flights between London Gatwick and New York during April and May 2018.

Norwegian-HiFly

Now it seems British Airways is wet leasing three Qatar Airways A330 aircraft over the summer to cover checks on the B787s.

According to Flight Global the checks are on the Rolls-Royce Trent 1000-powered aircraft following concerns over blade durability. The problem is industry-wide, and should not cause concerns about flight safety, but it will affect passengers booked on these flights, since the Qatar Airways aircraft have a different configuration to the British Airways B787-9 aircraft (they also don’t have premium economy – World Traveller Plus).

It is unclear at present which flights are affected by the substitutions which will take place between June 1 and September 30, 2018.

British Airways told Business Traveller

“The safety of our customers and crew is always our top priority and we would never operate an aircraft if it was unsafe to do so.”

“Like other airlines around the world, we are carrying out detailed precautionary inspections on Rolls-Royce Trent 1000 engines on some of our Boeing 787-9s to ensure we meet all the relevant regulatory requirements.”

“To facilitate the additional Rolls-Royce engine inspections and any associated maintenance we are making some minor schedule adjustments.”

“We are looking at a range of options to ensure that we minimise any changes to our customers’ travel plans in the coming weeks.”

Business Traveller understands that the extra checks and associated maintenance only applies to some of the Rolls-Royce Trent 1000 Package C engines on the B787-9s operated by British Airways, not the B787-8s which are unaffected by the latest EASA and FAA directive relating to compressor checks.

ba.com

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