Here's what's keeping Airbus's newest jet on the ground

Delays to the first flight of Airbus SE’s revamped A330neo jetliner stem from an unexpected requirement for extra testing of the model’s Rolls-Royce Holdings engines, according to the planemaker. Rolls-Royce is struggling to find the capacity on its test-beds to complete the extra trials, Airbus’s head of programs, Didier Evrard, said in an interview. That has pushed back the jet’s inaugural flight from spring to late summer, with service entry now scheduled for the end of the first half of 2018. While the A330neo’s Trent 7000 turbine is derived from an engine already used on the Boeing Co. 787, Rolls-Royce added ducts that will divert, or “bleed,” hot air over the Airbus plane’s wings for de-icing purposes. The Boeing aircraft employs a completely different cold-weather system featuring embedded heating mats. “The main issue is not the product itself, it’s the workload at Rolls-Royce and, particularly, the testing capacity,” Evrard said. “We have added some functions like the bleed function, which is not on the 787, so you have to go on the whole development cycle again. This requires a lot of testing to certify the engine.” Rolls-Royce said that it is continuing to work closely with Airbus on the A330neo program and that it aims to dispatch the initial set of Trent 7000 engines “in the coming days.” <br/>