Emirates says Rolls-Royce’s A380 engines not up to standard

Emirates said it’s unhappy with performance shortfalls afflicting $6.1b’s worth of Rolls-Royce Holdings engines ordered to power a batch of 50 Airbus Group SE A380 superjumbos. Feedback on the Trent 900 powerplants indicates “technical issues” that need to be resolved before the first plane is delivered to Emirates next month, Tim Clark, the Dubai-carrier’s president, said Friday in Frankfurt.“We have a new engine coming on and there are some issues with that at the moment,” Clark said. “We want the engines as promised in the contract.” Emirates last year ordered 217 Trent 900s -- sufficient to power the 50 four-engine A380s, plus spares -- after previously purchasing GP7000 powerplants from an alliance of General Electric and Pratt & Whitney for its first 90 superjumbos. The deal with Rolls included unspecified “quality improvements.” Clark said Emirates will “hopefully” still take the first Rolls-Royce powered plane on Dec. 2 as planned, adding that talks are underway with the manufacturer on resolving the performance problems and whether it should compensate the airline. Rolls-Royce said that it is “working with Emirates and Airbus to meet the planned entry into service of the Trent-powered A380 within the Emirates fleet.” Clark said that officially deferring delivery of the planes isn’t an option since doing so would impact the model’s entire supply chain. Emirates is due to take 25 Rolls-powered A380s between now and 2019, plus 25 more from 2021 on.<br/>