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A technical failure in a Rolls-Royce engine forced an Iberia flight bound for New York from Madrid to make an emergency landing at Boston Logan Wednesday. Pilots made an in-flight shutdown of one of the Trent XWB engines with engineers due to examine it later in the day. It caused shares in Rolls-Royce to fall more than 4% in morning trading in London, the biggest fall in more than a year. Although the shares recovered by mid-afternoon to trade 1.5% lower, the initial reaction highlights unease over the company’s engine programmes. Rolls-Royce has been grappling with problems related to the Trent 1000 engines that power Boeing Dreamliners. An analyst at Jefferies, said while the episode was “embarrassing as it’s a brand new aircraft with a new operator”, the issue “was not comparable with that on the Trent 1000”. <br/>

Consumers are paying the price for “blatant profiteering” by the nation’s airports, according to Qantas, which says their world-leading fees and earnings are proof new rules are needed to stop them abusing their monopoly positions. The airline has told a Productivity Commission inquiry that current regulation is failing to stop airports from "gouging" airlines on the fees they charge to use their runways, terminals and other infrastructure. "Lack of effective regulation has opened the door to blatant profiteering," Qantas' group executive for govt and regulatory affairs, Andrew Parker, said. Qantas' submission to the inquiry into airport regulation says that while it had cut its own operating costs by 4% (excluding fuel) since 2015, the fees it paid to airports had risen 6.5% in real terms. <br/>