The Trent XWB has accumulated millions of flying hours since entering service, powering the Airbus A350 family with exceptional efficiency, resilience and low emissions.
Building on this track record, our engineers are nearing the final phase of a series of durability enhancements to the Trent XWB-97 that will double its time on wing in hot and dusty environments – including turbine technologies, refined cooling architectures and further optimisation of core components.
These improvements are informed directly by our unique data sets from some of the world’s most challenging operating environments. Insights from years of flying in the region and over 100 overhauls with customers such as Qatar Airways and Etihad, give us a clear view of how dust-rich conditions affect turbine durability.
To validate our approach, we ran a new Trent XWB-97 for 1,000 cycles and benchmarked it against our real-world wear database. With the specification confirmed, we tested a second engine fitted with the enhanced components.
The results so far give us confidence this performance will be replicated when the upgrades enter service in 2028.