Airfares have been forecast to hit record highs next year due to a predicted shortage of plane engines and spare parts. A shortage of Rolls-Royce Trent 1000 engines has already grounded British Airways and Virgin Atlantic flights.
Experts say the situation could spiral in 2025. Airlines now need to replace older stock, but a part shortage has delayed upgrades.
Last month, BA cancelled the resumption of daily flights between Heathrow and Kuala Lumpur because of the issue. A statement said at the time: “We’re disappointed that we’ve had to make further changes to our schedule as we continue to experience delays to the delivery of engines and parts from Rolls-Royce – particularly in relation to the Rolls-Royce Trent 1000 engines fitted to our 787 aircraft.”
Virgin has acknowledged similar issues and said services to Accra, Tel Aviv and Cape Town are being impacted. Paul Charles, former director of communications at Virgin Atlantic and now chief executive of PR firm The PC Agency, told the Independent that the issue has caused massive problems.
He said: “Airline planning teams have had to rewrite their rulebooks on how they use their fleet on the most popular destinations that they need to protect – and gamble on which routes will pay the price and be deleted from their networks.
“For consumers, prices will continue to rise – 2025 will see record fares on many routes. If you want to go abroad next year, be prepared to pay for it.”
A Virgin Atlantic spokesperson told the Standard: “We have taken the difficult decision to delay the restart of our service to Tel Aviv into the Winter 2025 season, and our new service to Accra will also be delayed into the Winter 2025 season.
“Our Cape Town schedule will also pause one month earlier than planned, on 31 March 2025, before returning for the winter season in October 2025. “It’s been necessary to make these changes due to reduced availability of Rolls Royce Trent 1000 engines, which are fitted to our Boeing 787-9 aircraft.
“Our teams are working closely with our partners at Rolls-Royce on solutions to minimise disruption to our flying programme. We’d like to apologise to affected customers, who have been contacted with their options, including to rebook travel with an alternative carrier, move to a different date or receive a refund.”
Rolls-Royce said: “This is due to the current challenging industry-wide supply chain constraints. We continue to work with all our customers to minimise the impact of the limited availability of spare parts. All of the companies in our industry are suffering from this.
“The Trent 1000 is an important engine for our customers and business. Its reliability is proven, with over 19 million service flying hours since its entry into service in 2011.
“We have been taking decisive action and moving quickly to prioritise the resources needed to reduce the impact created by the current industry-wide supply chain constraints; it’s the highest priority for our Civil Aerospace division.
“Over the past 12 months, we’ve introduced several initiatives to reduce the impact on our customers. Our Trent 1000 Task Force has been working at pace to deliver these improvements, drawing on our world-class engineering and technology capability. This Task Force brings together people across our operations, supply chain, engineering, technology, safety and planning teams.
“In addition, our first stage Durability Enhancement package for the Trent 1000 is in the final stages of certification. This is part of the £1bn we are investing in our products. It will make our engine highly competitive and will more than double engine time on the wing.”
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