All Nippon Airways (ANA) announced yesterday that it has been forced to cancel up to 113 Japan domestic flights due to mandatory inspections of the Rolls Royce Trent 1000 type engines that power the airlines’ Boeing 787 airplanes.
In a statement, Yuji Hirako, president and chief executive officer of ANA, said that although the airline has been working very closely with Rolls-Royce over the past two years to minimise the impact of the issues with the engines on its flight schedule, “due to the additional mandatory inspections which were announced in mid June,we are cancelling a limited number of flights”.
He added: “Safety is always our top priority for our customers, and we consider these cancellations unavoidable to maintain our highest safety standards.”
In an operational update on June 11, Rolls-Royce confirmed that it had found similar issues relating to the Intermediate Pressure Compressor in a population of Trent 1000 engines, known as Package C engines, in another variant, the Package B engines. In agreement with the regulatory authorities and Boeing, Rolls-Royce said that it will carry out a one-off inspection of its Trent 1000 Package B fleet, “to further inform our understanding”. The Package B standard has been in service since 2012 and consists of 166 engines. According to the Flight Fleet Analyzer database, there are 61 aircraft with Package B type engines currently in service, with eight in storage.
These inspections were supported by an EASA Airworthiness Directive also issued on June 11 [click here for the EASA AD].
At the time the new inspection process was announced, Rolls-Royce described the impact on customer operations as “limited” since the programme of one-off inspections will involve on-wing existing inspection techniques. For ANA, however, the issue has resulted in cancellation of flights, and more airlines may follow suit.