April 20, 20188 yr The FAA are restricting 787s powered by some variants of the Rolls Royce Trent engine to 140 minute ETOPS after RR stated that the issues with the stage 2 compressor blades are "more hazardous than they first understood" and they are doing a redesign of the stage 2 blades. Apparently if an engine failure occurred, the remaining engine would have to operate at maximum continuous thrust to maintain level flight and somewhat alarmingly the FAA stated that under these circumstances “If the remaining engine already had cracked IPC stage 2 blades, the likelihood of the remaining engine failing will further increase before a diversion can be safely completed”. Even a 140 minutes ETOPS limit seems a little too generous under those circumstances and I'm not sure I would want to be on an ETOPS flight on a 787 which had these engines! At least Virgin had the sense to lease in additional A330s to temporarily replace the 787s that had the issue. Certainly not good times for RR, P&W or CFM at the moment! Bill
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