South African Airways (SAA) has unveiled a $200-million contract with Rolls-Royce plc for maintenance of the Trent 556 engines on the airline’s new fleet of nine Airbus A340-600s.
Under the ten-year Total Care deal announced on Monday, based on an agreed scale of costs per flight hour, Rolls-Royce will maintain the engines powering the four-engined ultra-long-range airliners. The first of these is set to be delivered later this month.
The deal brings to close to $2-billion the value of service agreements won by Rolls-Royce in the last 12 months.
Charles Cuddington, Managing Director — Airlines, Rolls-Royce, said: “South African Airways becomes the fourth customer in the past six months for the new, larger A340s to opt for this kind of long-term Trent Total Care package and this agreement means the chance to extend an excellent relationship with SAA, developed over 40 years.”
He said the Trent 500 represented a second generation of Rolls-Royce power for SAA’s long-haul operations, joining the RB211-524H-T used on the airline’s fleet of Boeing 747-400s. The RB211s were also covered by an earlier Total Care agreement.
SAA would also operate a second member of the Trent family, the Trent 700, when it took delivery of two leased Airbus A330 twinjets.
Rolls-Royce plc operates in four growth markets — civil aerospace, defence aerospace, marine and energy. Annual sales total around six billion pounds, of which over 40% currently comes from aftermarket services. Its order book stands at more than 19-billion pounds. – I-Net Bridge