Rolls-Royce AE engine family hits 70 million flight hours

ad
Rolls-Royce AE engine_indianBureaucracy
Rolls-Royce AE engine_indianBureaucracy

The Rolls-Royce AE engine family has topped 70 million engine flight hours, amassing a record of dependable and efficient service across military and commercial fleets in the US and around the world.

Rolls-Royce AE engines power C-130Js, V-22s, Global Hawks and a number of military, corporate and regional aircraft. They are in service with the US Air Force, Marines, Navy, Coast Guard, NASA and multiple military and civil customers around the world.

The AE engine line began as a powerplant for the V-22 tiltrotor aircraft for the US Marine Corps and US Air Force Special Operations Command, with first flight of the V-22 in 1989. Derivatives of the engine soon found their way onto other aircraft as the power and dependable design proved adaptable. All Rolls-Royce AE engines share a common engine core, and are about 80 percent common in their manufacture.

The result is a powerful and reliable engine, produced cost-effectively on one engine assembly line at the Rolls-Royce facility in Indianapolis, US. Rolls-Royce has delivered more than 6,500 AE engines for a variety of platforms.

Phil Burkholder, Rolls-Royce, President Defense Aerospace, said: “The versatility and dependability of the Rolls-Royce AE engine family is legendary, and has been proven in more than 70 million flight hours in military and commercial service around the world. And there’s more innovation to come: an AE 1107 engine will provide the power for the new DARPA X-Plane.”

The AE engine family includes:

  • AE 1107: Powers the V-22, Aurora LightningStrike (DARPA X-Plane) and US Navy Ship-to-Shore Connector.
  • AE 2100: Powers the C-130J, C-27J, Japan’s US-2, LM-100J and Saab 2000.
  • AE 3007: Powers the Global Hawk and Triton UAVs, Embraer ERJ and Legacy 600/650, Textron Aviation Cessna Citation X and X+.

About Rolls-Royce Holdings plc

  1. Rolls-Royce’s vision is to be the market-leader in high performance power systems where our engineering expertise, global reach and deep industry knowledge deliver outstanding customer relationships and solutions. We operate across five businesses: Civil Aerospace, Defence Aerospace, Marine, Nuclear and Power Systems.
  2. Rolls-Royce has customers in more than 150 countries, comprising more than 400 airlines and leasing customers, 160 armed forces, 4,000 marine customers including 70 navies, and more than 5,000 power and nuclear customers.
  3. We have three common themes across all our businesses:
    • Investing in and developing engineering excellence
    • Driving a manufacturing and supply chain transformation which will embed operational excellence in lean, lower-cost facilities and processes
    • Leveraging our installed base, product knowledge and engineering capabilities to provide customers with outstanding service through which we can capture aftermarket value long into the future.
  4. Annual underlying revenue was £13.8 billion in 2016, around half of which came from the provision of aftermarket services. The firm and announced order book stood at £80 billion at the end of 2016.
  5. In 2016, Rolls-Royce invested £1.3 billion on research and development. We also support a global network of 31 University Technology Centres, which position Rolls-Royce engineers at the forefront of scientific research.
  6. Rolls-Royce employs 50,000 people in more than 46 countries. More than 16,000 of these are engineers.
  7. The Group has a strong commitment to apprentice and graduate recruitment and to further developing employee skills. In 2015 we employed 228 graduates and 277 apprentices through our worldwide training programmes.

Be the first to comment

Leave a Reply