Tim Clark, President of Emirates, alleged that the engines of the Airbus A350-1000 are defective. He cites this as the reason why the airline did not acquire the aircraft on top of its orders during the first day of the 2023 Dubai Airshow. The executive plainly stated that, when it comes to the A350-1000, the Rolls-Royce Trent XWB-97 is quote “not doing what we want.
” According to Clark, the engine variant used on the A350-900 should perform as expected. The first Airbus A350-900s are scheduled to arrive at Emirates in July 2024, entering service a month later. But it’s a different story for the A350-1000.
Regarding the Trent XWB-97s, Clark stated that they need to quote-unquote “stay on the wing,” saying: “If the engine did what we wanted it to do and Rolls-Royce knows what we want it to do, and so does Airbus, then we would re-enter [the Airbus A350-1000] into the assessment for our fleet. ” The airline’s President also stated that he does not want to have aircraft that are quote-unquote “breaking down” constantly, saying: “We do not buy airplanes that are defective. ” Still, Clark said that the Airbus A350-1000 is a good aircraft, adding that if Emirates ordered the largest variant of the A350 aircraft family, it would buy between 35 and 50 units.
However, the airline will not order the type for now since the aircraft's engines can only do about a quarter of the cycles that Emirates wants them to perform. “In the process of making this video, Emirates announced an order for 15 A350-900s from Airbus at the Dubai Airshow. This takes its total backlog for the type to 65 aircraft.
The lack of A350-1000 in the order could be seen as confirmation of Emirates' dissatisfaction with the performance of the Rolls-Royce Trent engines for the longer a350 variant. ” Airbus Orders & Deliveries data, as of October 31, 2023, showed that the A350-900 is the more popular variant, with customers ordering 791 aircraft, 487 of which have been delivered. In comparison, airlines ordered 226 A350-1000s, with Air Algerie being the latest airline to order the type in August 2023.
In 2023, the A350-1000 has outpaced the A350-900 in sales, with 78 and 49 net orders, respectively. The A350-1000’s sales numbers include 23 units that were reinstated after Airbus and Qatar Airways settled their dispute over the A350’s paint surface degradation issues. After the remarks made the headlines, Rolls-Royce provided a statement to Simple Flying, saying: "We [.
. . ] continue to improve and invest in our engines through their life and the XWB-97 on the A350-1000 is no exception…[it’s] a good engine and we’ll be continuing to ensure it improves as we look to potentially rolling in some of the new technologies from our UltraFan demonstrator programme.
” "The Trent XWB-97 is the only new-generation high-thrust engine in service and has proven its reliability and durability over 5 years of service and more than 2 million Engine Flight Hours – this is set to increase to more than 5 million by 2025. " Major operators of the A350-1000 include Qatar Airways, British Airways, and Cathay Pacific. Interestingly, as vocal as he was about Airbus A350 surface degradation, Qatar Airways’ former CEO Akbar al Baker never had any specific complaints about engine performance on the A350-1000s.
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