Cathay Pacific is conducting inspections of its entire fleet of Airbus A350 aircraft as a «precautionary measure» after discovering engine issues.
The information was initially reported by Bloomberg, which, citing sources from Cathay Pacific, stated that an unspecified failure was identified in a component of the engine (manufactured by Rolls-Royce) on an A350 that was forced to return from its flight to Zurich on Monday, and that a subsequent review of the fleet revealed «several engine components that need to be replaced.»
The airline, based in Hong Kong, detailed that the inspection of its 48 A350 aircraft will require some of them to be out of service for several days, affecting its flight schedules, of which 24 have already been canceled by Tuesday.
Cathay Pacific operates 30 Airbus A350-900 with an average age of 4.7 years, and 18 A350-1000 with an average age of 6.4 years. It is the third-largest operator of the A350 family, behind Singapore Airlines (64 aircraft) and Qatar Airways (58 aircraft).
Cathay Pacific‘s September flight schedule includes services with the A350 to Amsterdam, Auckland, Barcelona, Bangkok, Bangalore, Boston, Delhi, Frankfurt, Seoul, New York, Johannesburg, Osaka-Kansai, London-Heathrow, Madrid, Manchester, Melbourne, Tokyo-Narita, Chicago O’Hare, San Francisco, Singapore, Sydney, Taipei, Toronto, and Zurich. This represents an average of 502 flights and 148,000 seats per week.
The A350 family is responsible for 25% of the seats capacity offered by Cathay Pacific in September, according to data collected by Aviacionline through Cirium. The Boeing 777 family leads with 32.8%, followed by the A330 family with 31.6%. In fourth place, behind the A350, is the A320, with 10.6% of the seats capacity.
However, in terms of available seat kilometers (ASK), due to its deployment on the airline’s longest routes, the A350 represents 43.7% of the total offered by Cathay Pacific, followed by the B777 with 39.2%, the A330 with 14%, and the A320 with 3.1%.
