LONDON—Rolls-Royce has praised “operational improvements across our MRO network” for helping to “effectively eliminate” aircraft grounded due to problems with its engines.
The British engine-maker said July 30 that better operational and supply chain resilience had helped increase large engine MRO output by 13% and large engine refurbishments by 35%.
In turn, this helped drive a big increase in group operating profit for the first six months, to £2.5 billion ($3.4 billion) from £1.7 billion. Its civil aerospace sales climbed 29% to £6.2 billion, 67% of which came from services.
Part of the boost stemmed from rising demand for widebody services, which helped raise large engine flying hours above 2019 levels and 4% higher than last year. Rolls-Royce undertook 556 large engine shop visits during the first six months of 2026, and is guiding for up to 1,550 for the full year.
This meant more shop visits and more revenue from Rolls-Royce’s long-term service agreements, which have also become more profitable for the company thanks to “commercial optimization” and the renegotiation of onerous contracts. Across its widebody and business aviation MRO, the OEM reported £574 million in gross contractual margin improvements during the first half.
“In civil aerospace, where we continued to improve our aftermarket profitability, we have also effectively eliminated aircraft on ground, providing a significant operational benefit to our customers,” said CEO Tufan Erginbilgiç.
Erginbilgiç has masterminded a remarkable turnaround at Rolls-Royce: Since taking charge in 2023, its market capitalization has climbed to £124 billion from around £10 billion, making it the fourth largest company in the UK’s FTSE 100 index.
Emblematic of this transformation has been upgrades to the Rolls-Royce Trent 1000 engine, which had been a PR disaster for the company due to continued durability problems despite numerous purported fixes.
Now, upgraded high-pressure turbine blades are moving operators toward Rolls-Royce’s target of more than doubling time on wing. In turn, this is driving improvements across Rolls-Royce’s aftermarket network, reducing the need for spare engines and freeing up shop space to accommodate greater volumes of profitable maintenance work.
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