Rolls-Royce aircraft engines at idle
Romain Guillot
 le 07/05/2020 , Maintenance aéronautique, Ingénierie
Rolls-Royce is moving towards a new restructuring plan which could include the loss of 8000 jobs, the equivalent of 15% of its workforce.
A majority of these job cuts will directly concern its commercial aircraft engines branch, the British aero-engine manufacturer suffering from the impact of the coronavirus pandemic on airline operations.
Rolls-Royce is indeed the victim of the concomitance of different trends that weigh on its activities. First of all, the number of flight hours accumulated by the fleet powered by the Trent family of engines has been in free fall since February (TotalCare integrated contracts).
Deliveries of new engines (all wide-body aircraft from Airbus today, some of the Boeing 787s) are also down sharply given the postponement of certain deliveries to their customers since the outbreak of the crisis, a trend which will continue with the production rate reductions announced for the A330neo (2 per month), the A350 (6 per month) and the 787 (10 per month then 7 per month in 2022 from 14 in 2019).
Finally, a significant number of older generation engines (Trent 500 on A340-600, Trent 800 on Triple Seven of the first generation, Trent 900 on A380 and RB211 on 747-400 Pax) will never fly again with the acceleration of withdrawals for these types of aircraft globally.
"We have taken rapid measures to increase our liquidity, drastically reduce our expenses (...). But we will need to go further, "a Rolls Royce spokesperson said, adding that discussions were underway with the unions and that the decisions on jobs should be announced by the end of May.
Rolls-Royce, which today employs 52,000 people worldwide, has already reduced its workforce by more than 4,500 since 2018.
|
