Hong Kong. 25 June 2018. Rolls-Royce and Cathay Pacific Airways celebrate the delivery of its first Airbus A350-1000, powered by the Trent XWB-97, the latest version of the Trent XWB, the most efficient large aero engine in service today.
The aircraft arrived in Hong Kong on 20 June, making Cathay Pacific the first airline in the Greater China region to receive an A350-1000. Cathay Pacific has ordered a total of 20 A350-1000 aircraft, and the engines are all fully covered by Rolls-Royce’s flagship TotalCare® service.
Rolls-Royce has supplied engines to Cathay Pacific for more than 40 years and the celebrations today mark another important step on that journey. The delivery also highlights the continued success of the Trent XWB, the fastest selling widebody jet engine ever, with over 1,700 engines ordered by 45 customers worldwide.
Attending the handover ceremony at Airbus headquarters in Toulouse, France, Dominic Horwood, Rolls-Royce, Director Customers and Services – Civil Aerospace said: “We are privileged to have supported such a valued customer like Cathay Pacific for decades. It is a great pleasure to join the celebrations for the beginning of another exciting chapter with this outstanding new aircraft. We look forward to further strengthening our partnerships and our Trent XWB engines delivering industry-leading reliability, excellent fuel efficiency and environmental performance.”
Cathay Pacific was the launch customer for the Trent 700 on the Airbus A330 in 1995. It also became the first in Greater China to operate the A350-900 with the Trent XWB-84 in 2016. Today, the airline has close to 100 Rolls-Royce powered aircraft in service in its fleet.
Greater China is the world’s fastest growing aviation market, presenting tremendous opportunities for Rolls-Royce to strengthen its leading position in the widebody market. Rolls-Royce currently powers over half of the widebody installed fleet in the region, and continues to grow its presence with the opening of the Regional Airline Customer Service Centre in Beijing in 2016, which draws on Rolls-Royce’s global engineering and digital capabilities to provide an ever higher level of service to customers.
It sucks in up to 1.3 tonnes of air, the equivalent of a squash court, every second at take-off. The force on a fan blade at take-off is equivalent to a load of almost 90 tons, the same as nine London buses hanging off each blade. High pressure turbine blades inside the engine rotate at 12,500 rpm, with their tips reaching 1,200mph – twice the speed of sound. At take off each of the engine’s 62 high pressure turbine blades generates around 900 horsepower per blade – the equivalent to that of a Formula One racing car. At full power, air leaves the nozzle at the back of the engine travelling at almost 1000mph.
