Why Airbus has had a better run with Rolls-Royce engines

A Rolls-Royce XWB engine powers a Cathay Pacific A350-900 over Papua New Guinea. Photo / Grant Bradley

Airbus says its A350s have avoided problems with Rolls-Royce engines that have plagued Dreamliners made by rival Boeing.

Hundreds of a certain type of Rolls-Royce engine used on Boeing Dreamliners need extra checks, and in some cases major repairs, following corrosion and cracking problems.

Close to 180 of the Airbus long-haul planes have been delivered and the head of A350XWB marketing, Marisa Lucas-Ugena, said her company and the engine maker had worked to get the later generation XWB engine right.

Since entry into service in late 2014, the Trent XWB engines had racked up 1.8 million flying hours for 99.89 per cent operational reliability.

Of the aircraft flying, only seven had engines taken off the wing, and in three of those cases that was not because of any problems, but to ''sample'' them.

''Rolls-Royce as well as Airbus have been extremely disciplined in how we have designed the specs but also the way we have approached maturity,'' she told the Herald.

''We've had a very detailed approach and learned lessons from other programmes.''

Airbus has two versions of the A350 delivered. The -900 series has engines with 84,000lb of thrust and the -1000 series has engines with 97,000lb of thrust.

The second of the A350-1000s was delivered to Cathay Pacific from Airbus' Toulouse headquarters last week.

The engines have 70 million hours of Trent family experience.

Lucas-Ugena said Airbus had taken a different approach to Boeing's Dreamliners and so had Rolls.

''We changed the designs, we changed the materials and Rolls-Royce did the same thing.'

Close to 400 Dreamliner engines could be affected by cracks to intermediate pressure compressor blades.