Rolls Royce earn $2 billion Airbus contract

The giant airplane engine manufacturer Rolls Royce announced yesterday that they had won the lucrative contract to build the engines for a fleet of planes that would head Air China and Ethiopian Airlines. It was disclosed to the press at the Dubai Airshow on Sunday. The Air China order will cover 75 per cent of the order with engines supplied for 20 A330s. Ethiopian will take the remainder at a cost of $480 million which will be fitted to 12 of the smaller A350-900 XWB aircraft. Airbus released the statement shortly after Ethiopian announced their order of the wide body planes costing a total of $3 billion.

Times have been hard in the airline industry and this latest coup for Rolls Royce will ensure the prosperity of the company for the coming future. They have factories in Bristol, Derby, Sunderland and Glasgow all doing a variety of projects in the development of engines. The XWB engines are a great sell for Rolls Royce as they are the most fuel efficient and environmentally friendly engines on the market today. The XWB powered engine planes will not be ready until 2017, but Air China is set to receive their new planes in just two years’ time.

The car and the aircraft engine manufacturer are now two separate companies after the government stepped in, in the early 1970s. It had started to go into administration so the jet engines sector was nationalised until 1987 when it again went into privatisation. They are today one of the largest defense contractors in the world.