Rolls-Royce working to support the A340 and the Trent 500 engine type

Rolls-Royce CCO Dominic Horwood confirmed the engine manufacturer's determination to support the A340 and the Trent 500 engine type will involve more dialogue with operators to understand their requirements, committing to "think creatively" to find solutions, while also committing to "digging deep" commercially on lowering engine maintenance costs with their four to two promise (aviationnews-online.com, 04-Dec-2013). "We want to see this airplane enable more operators to fly long-haul… We want to keep looking after these engines…I accept fully that some of you may feel that we have been inflexible with our service solutions… We understand that we have to adapt," he said. In addition to the 4 for 2 price promise, Mr Horwood stated that in an attempt to become more flexible with its service solutions for Trent 500 engines as the A340 reaches a level of maturity that involves the aircraft being transitioned from first operator airlines to second and third tier operators, Rolls-Royce is committing to a variety of new approaches under TotalCare to provide more adaptable and flexible solutions for these sorts of operators. Rolls-Royce also announced that it is forming a partnership with Lufthansa Technik to work with them on how to put some of those services into place. This will not involve Lufthansa Technik carrying out any overhaul services for Trent 500 engines but Lufthansa Technik's knowledge of working on more mature engine types combined with Rolls-Royce unique OEM expertise will enable it to ensure its new more flexible service solutions work for operators, with a particular early focus on the Trent 500. Rolls-Royce VP Customer Strategy & Marketing James Barry added, "We recognise that investors may be nervous of investing in the product and not being able to extract their money at the end of that investment,". We are working on being more flexible with TotalCare so we can flex things like time-on-wing. We can also provide leased engines and a spare engine service…We are starting to work on how we can squeeze costs out of the product, be it through alternative EMPs or the use of increased serviceable used material, or through asset exchange. We are extremely open minded and actively working on these things today."