Less than two years after its decision to commit to developing the Trent 7000 engine for the Airbus A330neo, Rolls-Royce (www.rolls-royce.com) has completed the first ground tests and is preparing to assemble the first flight-test engines.

The speed with which this has happened is only possible because the Trent 7000 is adapted directly from the Trent 1000 TEN — the latest version of the engine family, in advanced development for the Boeing 787.

Scheduled to make its debut on the first A330-900neo with TAP Portugal late next year, the engine is designed to reduce specific fuel consumption by 10% compared to the Trent 700.

Peter Johnston, head of customer marketing for Airbus at Rolls-Royce, said: “It is quite a tight programme on the Trent 7000, because Airbus wanted to get the aircraft into production as quickly as possible.

“However, in terms of technical activity, it’s fairly low-risk. Compared to the Trent 1000 TEN, the differences are as few as humanly possible. It is one of those rare cases where we have two engines with the same part numbers.”

Because of the limited changes, only four development engines are required for the Trent 7000 test programme. The initial engine — the 7001 — first ran last November and has since completed altitude tests at Arnold Engineering Development Center in Tennessee.

The third engine — the L73 — is “ready to go and is now attached to the test pylon,” Mr Johnstone said. It will be used for functional and operability testing and will be accompanied by the second engine — the L72 — which is currently undergoing module build. Parts for the fourth engine — the L74 — are currently coming together in Derby.