The price of the Rolls Royce aircraft engine has risen not to hinder sales due to high demand, a senior official says

* Rolls is investing £1bn in engine upgrades

* Thai Airways customers chose competitor engines this month

* A 12% rise in maintenance prices last year did not dampen sales

SINGAPORE, Feb 21 – A price increase for Rolls-Royce jet engines will not hurt sales, a chief executive told Reuters on Wednesday, as demand for new planes and engines is strong across the industry.

“Prices have increased across the industry. But we’ve also had a record year in terms of sales… That’s certainly not a hindrance,” said Ewen McDonald, chief customer officer of the civil aviation company, outside Singapore. Air Shows.

In November, British company Rolls-Royce said it would quadruple its profits over five years by improving the performance of its jet engines and cutting costs.

The main driver of profit will be a significant shift in margins in the sector of engines that power almost half of long-haul aircraft, including all Airbus A330neo and A350 models and some Boeing 787 aircraft.

This increase includes a 12% increase in the price of engine maintenance.

This month, long-time customer Thai Airways chose rival GE to supply 80 new Boeing 787 engines, following what sources said was a price disagreement.

“Thai is a big Rolls Royce customer. It will continue to be,” Mr McDonald said. “You win some, you lose some.

In November, Rolls was criticized by Emirates Airlines chairman Tim Clark over the durability of the XWB-97 engine in hot and dusty conditions, saying it needed to be improved before Emirates bought the Airbus A350-1000.

Rolls Royce said last year it would invest more than 1 billion pounds ($1.26 billion) in upgrading its four Trent engine models.

According to McDonald, by 2028, the length of the Emirates to Dubai – will have doubled.

Under normal operating conditions, the repair time will increase by 50%.

Global aviation demand saw an almost complete recovery to pre-crisis levels in 2019, but the industry faced severe shortages of parts, workers and new aircraft.

“The current limitation is how many planes can be built,” Mr. McDonald said. “People are ordering further and further away because they are afraid they won’t be able to get new aircraft to support their growth.

In recent months, Rolls-Royce has begun to say that it may eventually restart the production of single-aisle jet engines, which are currently split between Pratt & Witney (RTX) and CFM International, a joint venture between Safran and GE.

“We will be interested in opportunities in the narrow-body aircraft space,” Mr. McDonald said, but the company is waiting to see what the aircraft manufacturers demand for future designs. ($1 = 0.7924 pounds) (Reporting by Lisa Barrington; Editing by Sharon Singleton)