Aviation International News senior correspondent Ian Goold has been involved in aerospace since 1964 and in aviation media for more than 40 years. He enjoyed a 20-year career at Flight International magazine, where he was latterly air-transport editor before turning freelance in 1993. A winner of the European Regions Airline Association Hank McGonagle award for excellence in aerospace journalism and a Royal Aeronautical Society Aerospace Journalist of the Year global&nbsp;award, he has edited or contributed to aerospace and aviation magazines, special publications, and websites in Africa, Asia/Pacific, Europe, the Middle East, and North and South America. Ian entered aerospace as an apprentice at the British Aircraft Corporation at Brooklands (Weybridge), where he worked on production and final assembly lines of the Vickers Super VC10, and BAC One-Eleven , and manufacture of Concorde major sub-assemblies. He subsequently graduated from the BAC Design Training School to work in the airframe structures drawing office (including design of international future projects, such as the Panavia Tornado multi-role combat aircraft) before joining Flight International in 1973. Apart from years of reading aircraft magazines and books, his first direct contact with aviation media had come during the early 1970s when he was involved at Brooklands with the Weybridge Man-powered Aircraft Group, which designed and built the tenth aircraft to fly under purely human power. As an aviation journalist, he has worked at more than&nbsp; 50 of the major biennial&nbsp;global and regional international aerospace industry shows at Le Bourget, Farnborough, Singapore, and Dubai (having missed attending only one "Farnborough" since 1960), plus innumerable NBAA, HAI, (U.S.) AOPA, and EBACE Conventions and ERA Assemblies. His favourite aircraft is the Hawker Hunter, of which – as a schoolboy – he heard hundreds make their first flights from Dunsfold, where also on September 24, 2013, he saw the penultimate landing of the VC10 (happily involving an example of which he had witnessed the maiden takeoff in 1970) a day before the last example made the design's final flight (unless, of course....).

Senior correspondent

Ian Goold

<a href="http://awin.aviationweek.com/ProgramProfileDetails.aspx?pgId=884&amp;pgName=Airbus+A350+XWB" title="Airbus A350 XWB">Rolls-Royce new Trent 7000 &nbsp;demonstrator unit made an “initial power run” for the first time about three months ago. The latest offering from R-R is the seventh member of the engine family and is destined to provide exclusive power for the Airbus A330neo (for “new engine option”) that is scheduled to enter service in 2017.</a>

 


<a href="http://awin.aviationweek.com/ProgramProfileDetails.aspx?pgId=884&amp;pgName=Airbus+A350+XWB" title="Airbus A350 XWB">The demonstrator is being used to establish the key technical features of the engine, which combines experience from the A330’s current Trent 700, architecture from the Trent 1000-TEN (designed to power the Boeing 787-10), and technology from the Trent XWB, the manufacturer’s latest large civil engine.</a>

 


<a href="http://awin.aviationweek.com/ProgramProfileDetails.aspx?pgId=884&amp;pgName=Airbus+A350+XWB" title="Airbus A350 XWB">The 68,000- to 72,000-pound-thrust Trent 7000 is planned to provide “significant” performance benefits, compared with the Trent 700, improving specific fuel consumption by 10 percent, doubling the bypass ratio and reducing noise by half.</a>

 


<a href="http://awin.aviationweek.com/ProgramProfileDetails.aspx?pgId=884&amp;pgName=Airbus+A350+XWB" title="Airbus A350 XWB">To meet A330neo requirements, R-R (Stand N23) has adapted the Trent 1000-TEN to incorporate a new electronic engine control unit, new gearbox, air-start capability, and related changes. Before beginning series production, the manufacturer will assemble four development examples of the engine, which also sports a new nacelle and electronic bleed-air system that uses A350 technology.</a>

 


<a href="http://awin.aviationweek.com/ProgramProfileDetails.aspx?pgId=884&amp;pgName=Airbus+A350+XWB" title="Airbus A350 XWB">The UK-based enginemaker recently celebrated a successful first 12 months of revenue passenger service with the 84,000-pound-thrust Trent XWB-84 engine on the first Airbus A350-900 XWB (for “extra wide body”) twin-aisle twinjet. The company claims that the milestone, reached in mid-January, was achieved “in an exemplary fashion” with a technical dispatch reliability rate of 99.83 percent. Thirty Trent XWBs entered service on newly delivered A350s during last year.</a>

 


<a href="http://awin.aviationweek.com/ProgramProfileDetails.aspx?pgId=884&amp;pgName=Airbus+A350+XWB" title="Airbus A350 XWB">Airbus expects the first stretched A350-1000 airframe to enter final assembly line this month [February]. It is to be powered by the Trent XWB-97, now undergoing a nine-month, 120-hour flying program on an A380 testbed. The A350-1000 is planned to fly in the fourth quarter of the year, the schedule having slipped slightly from an earlier mid-2016 target, and to enter service about 12 months later, following certification work with three flight examples.</a>

 


<a href="http://awin.aviationweek.com/ProgramProfileDetails.aspx?pgId=884&amp;pgName=Airbus+A350+XWB" title="Airbus A350 XWB">Testing of the Trent XWB-97, which is fitted at the A380’s No 2 (port-side, inboard) position, began with demonstration of a wide range of power settings at altitudes of up to 35,000 ft and evaluation of operability and handling qualities from low speed up to Mach 0.87. Other work includes high-temperature and icing-condition test campaigns, and confirmation of the engine-relight envelope, according to R-R head of Trent XWB marketing Tim Boddy.</a>

 


<a href="http://awin.aviationweek.com/ProgramProfileDetails.aspx?pgId=884&amp;pgName=Airbus+A350+XWB" title="Airbus A350 XWB">Initial flights aimed at fine-tuning engine integration and “de-risking” the A350-1000’s early flight-test program. Later work is expected to concentrate on “maturity tests,” including further thermal-endurance and cyclic trials.</a>

 


<a href="http://awin.aviationweek.com/ProgramProfileDetails.aspx?pgId=884&amp;pgName=Airbus+A350+XWB" title="Airbus A350 XWB">While testbed flying continues in France, R-R has focused on “industrialization” of the initial 84,000-pound-thrust Trent XWB-84 engine as it accelerates production for the A350-900. Boddy reports a “smooth transition” from XWB pre-production operations, with a new build line established at its Derby (UK) factory.</a>

 


<a href="http://awin.aviationweek.com/ProgramProfileDetails.aspx?pgId=884&amp;pgName=Airbus+A350+XWB" title="Airbus A350 XWB">Before in-flight testing, the manufacturer had completed 150 hours of XWB-97 endurance testing, including 16+ hours at maximum take-off thrust and 42 hours at maximum continuous thrust. R-R has ground-run the XWB-97 at up to 99,000 pounds’ thrust after having earlier demonstrated 112,000 pounds’ thrust with an XWB-84 variant during “blade-out” testing.</a>

 


<a href="http://awin.aviationweek.com/ProgramProfileDetails.aspx?pgId=884&amp;pgName=Airbus+A350+XWB" title="Airbus A350 XWB">It also completed XWB-97 icing and X-ray testing last year, with “good results” that provided grounds for “high confidence” of achieving performance targets, according to Boddy. R-R sees “huge synergies” between the parallel XWB-84 and -97 engine programs. “We need to gather certification evidence from bench- and flight-testing before the A350-1000 first flight,” said Boddy.</a>

 


<a href="http://awin.aviationweek.com/ProgramProfileDetails.aspx?pgId=884&amp;pgName=Airbus+A350+XWB" title="Airbus A350 XWB">To meet Airbus assembly plans for about 10 aircraft a month, manufacture of Trent XWBs is being ramped up over about two years from 2.6 per week in late 2015 to 4.9 (including about one TXWB-97) a week before 2018. By next year, R-R expects to be building one XWB a day, the company having successfully achieved a parts-supply and production trial that saw “four engines assembled in four days.” Overall XWB production should reach 6.4/week by mid-2019, with monthly output comprising about 17 XWB-84s and around ten -97s.</a>

 


<a href="http://awin.aviationweek.com/ProgramProfileDetails.aspx?pgId=884&amp;pgName=Airbus+A350+XWB" title="Airbus A350 XWB">Although production engines will not feature the technology until it has been “industrialized,” the XWB-97 is also the first R-R engine having a major additive-layer manufactured structure–the 1.5-m (around 60-inch)-diameter, titanium low- and intermediate-pressure compressor front-bearing housing.</a>

 


<a href="http://awin.aviationweek.com/ProgramProfileDetails.aspx?pgId=884&amp;pgName=Airbus+A350+XWB" title="Airbus A350 XWB">R-R has dedicated Trent XWB-84 and -97 teams to translate testing lessons into powerplant maturity as production increases and the company develops service capabilities covering parts, spares, and training “to build inherent support.” Its venture into ALM has been driven by plans to improve Trent efficiency that also have contributed to major technology developments, including low-emission combustion systems, composite fan blades, and gearbox technologies that could appear on planned Advance and UltraFan engine programs.</a>

 


<a href="http://awin.aviationweek.com/ProgramProfileDetails.aspx?pgId=884&amp;pgName=Airbus+A350+XWB" title="Airbus A350 XWB">Up to the beginning of this year, five XWB-97s – including the flying-testbed example – had been run, logging almost 1,000 hours and 1,500 cycles. Two further planned units include the seventh XWB-97 that incorporates fan and core modules from previous test engines.</a>

 


<a href="http://awin.aviationweek.com/ProgramProfileDetails.aspx?pgId=884&amp;pgName=Airbus+A350+XWB" title="Airbus A350 XWB">Three units were in test, the third built (but the first -97 to run) having been used for rain and hail trials, after completion of system integration and “successful” large-bird ingestion. Two test engines also have been run at R-R’s Stennis facility in the U.S., one equipped to measure 2,000+ parameters of performance as the company sought to “gather as much telemetry as possible,” according to Boddy.</a>

 


<a href="http://awin.aviationweek.com/ProgramProfileDetails.aspx?pgId=884&amp;pgName=Airbus+A350+XWB" title="Airbus A350 XWB">One XWB-97 continues in performance and fan testing (and is likely to remain so for several more months), including fan “flutter” and cross-wind trials. It also has been used in nacelle/thrust-reverser unit integration. Another was used for simulating typical flight cycles, which R-R has usually conducted in batches of 1,000 (but which Boddy suggested last year might not continue beyond about 600).</a>

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