News
ANA to seek compensation from Rolls-Royce and ends NCA partnership
September 9th 2016
All Nippon Airways (ANA) parent, ANA Holdings Inc., will seek compensation from Rolls-Royce following the cancellation last month of more than a dozen flights after the airline found fatigue cracks in blades in the intermediate pressure turbine (IPT) on three B787 aircraft, Reuters reported. Read More »
ANA last week said it would replace all 100 Rolls-Royce Trent 1000 engines powering its 50 Dreamliners following the discovery of the cracks, while the manufacturer said it was re-designing the IPT blade, with the new design scheduled to be introduced by year-end.
ANA said Rolls-Royce had analysed the faulty blades and concluded fatigue cracks in IPT blades were “the result of sulfidation corrosion caused by chemical components in the atmosphere, and the propagation of these cracks correlates with the number of flight cycles that an engine has been used for”. The carrier, which normally flies the B787 on short domestic hops, said it “decided to replace the engines used for domestic operations earlier than what was designated by Rolls-Royce”.
Separately, the airline’s cargo unit, ANA Cargo, has announced it would end its partnership with NCA, Nippon Cargo Airlines, on the Naha-Narita route, because of a demand downturn.
In other Japanese news, the country’s Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism (MLIT) and the U.S. Department of Transportation this week confirmed they had made no changes to the allocation of daytime slots at Tokyo’s downtown Haneda Airport to U.S. carriers. Delta Air Lines was awarded two slot pairs for flights to Los Angeles and Minneapolis/St. Paul. American Airlines has received approval for service to Los Angeles, United Airlines for service to San Francisco and Hawaiian Airlines to Honolulu.
Hawaiian also was awarded the sole night-time slot for a split service to Honolulu (four-weekly) and Kona (thrice-weekly). It was the sole applicant for the 11pm to 2am departure period.
