Engine issue to cause flight disruption

WELLINGTON: Thousands of Air New Zealand passengers will be affected by cancellations and rescheduled flights until the middle of next week because of urgent aircraft engine maintenance.

The RollsRoyce Trent 1000 engines the airline uses in its Boeing 7879 Dreamliner fleet have been plagued with problems since last year.

Air NZ says European regulators have asked operators to do earlierthanusual maintenance checks on a specific part of the engine.

Nine Air NZ 787 Dreamliner planes have been caught out in the latest global issue with RollsRoyce engines.

RollsRoyce said about 380 Trent 1000 Package C series engines throughout the world were affected — nine of them in New Zealand.

It has not gone into detail about the compressor issue, but now requires a maintenance check after 300 cycles, down from 2000.

A cycle is defined as when a plane takes off then lands again.

Air NZ said it was a very busy time of year for travel.

It said the checks undertaken yesterday would disrupt international and domestic flights, and it apologised to the 6500 passengers affected.

Air NZ said it may have to bring in other planes from an outside company to keep up with flight demand.

In response to the same issue in December, Air NZ chartered two jets from Portuguese company Hi Fly to operate on some transtasman routes.

The company said it was considering using Hi Fly once again to keep flights close to schedule. — RNZ