Cathay Pacific said on Wednesday it had completed repairs on six of the 15 Airbus A350s that were grounded after experiencing problems with the fuel lines on their Trent XWB engines.
The six A350s, of undisclosed variants, have now been cleared for flight, but the Hong Kong carrier acknowledged there would be impacts on the route network until September 7.
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“This was a significant situation for Cathay to manage as the engine component failure was the first of its type to occur on any A350 aircraft anywhere in the world,” said Chief Operations and Service Delivery Officer Alex McGowan.
The grounding of Cathay’s 48 A350s occurred on September 2 after an A350-1000 aircraft, registration B-LXI, experienced a failure during the climbout of flight CX-383 from Hong Kong to Zurich.
The crew decided to return to the airport and the landing was safe. Another A350 was scrambled the same day and took the passengers to Switzerland.
However, the airline decided to carry out an emergency inspection of the entire fleet.
Other A350 operators carry out inspections
Rolls-Royce, the manufacturer of the Trent XWB engine, has only mentioned the -97 variant, used in the A350-1000, but has not issued any safety directive to date.
Despite this, other operators of the A350s have acknowledged having carried out similar inspections on their fleets, including Japan Airlines, Singapore Airlines and Qatar Airways.
None of these airlines, however, have suspended flights with the Airbus widebody.
