Pontifications: New Rolls

Aug 02, 2023

Rolls Royce will not fail. Unfortunately many of the comments on here regarding Rolls-Royce missing some serious points about “engine” industry. What Roll Royce does is a quite strategic “business”. This applies to GE and PW as well. Fall down of a such giant would cause serious troubles not just for UK or Airbus but all the aerospace industry. For example current issues that Boeing have had and is having put serious pressure on Airbus, because regardless of how good or bad Airbus does its job there will be serious doubt from aircraft operators. Please be awere there isn’t much people manufacture aircrafts. So basically UK cannot allow/afford RR to fail.

About the new CEO’s speech, I think it was very on purpose, maybe some words might be chosen better but overall it was a needed speech. That wasn’t just a speech to employers but to UK government and other companies within the industry. Especially, UK is failing on some areas, including aerospace industry on investment and “efficiency” matter. UK government seems is not aware of the situation. Some issues are beyond RR’s power.

New CEO made some good points on company’s performance compare to other companies within the industry. I think there are serious efficiency problems for RR. Future looking tough for RR but it is also bright, it can be bright. Key points will lead RR a bright future is the management not engineering in my opinion. RR is not having serious engineering issues at the moment. They fixed many issues on Trent 1000/7000. Probably Trent 1000 will not have more market share than GEnX. Because in some perspective gone is gone. Also TrentXWB is performing well, I don’t think project reached its design expectation in some aspects. But this not causing big troubles to airliners actually. I am 99 percent sure RR will be able to support TrentXWB. But keeping that 1 percent in mind is a good discipline and practice for aerospace industry. Material issues are big struggles for all engine manufacturers. Manufacturing engine components with advanced materials and with the same quality is so hard and expensive. But results are worth it.

Overall UltraFan is quite promising, they are doing some other improvements as well. But they need to sell first. Nuclear business of RR is also making improvement. They got two big military contract last year. One is B-52 engines, which will help RR a lot rather short term. Other one is new transport aircraft (FLRAA) for US Army, which is a long term project. Also, RR paid some dept due 2025 in advance with money coming from the sale of the ITP Aero.

At this point RR must go forward, and I think will go forward. A better RR will help the industry all together.