• Company based in Arnstadt near motorway junction Erfurter Kreuz in Thuringia, Germany, with 800 employees is an internationally renowned repair and overhaul service provider for Rolls-Royce Trent aircraft engines
• Continued vacancies for qualified professionals and ongoing training programme due to the company's capacity expansion
Arnstadt, 23 December 2019. N3 Engine Overhaul Services (N3), a Rolls-Royce plc. and Lufthansa Technik AG joint venture, has overhauled its first Rolls-Royce Trent XWB engine (A350 engine), which belongs to the Munich-based airline Deutsche Lufthansa's fleet of A350s.
With the delivery, N3 is permanently adding a fourth engine type to its future portfolio – namely the most state-of-the-art Rolls-Royce engine currently in use. So far, the repair and overhaul company has only serviced the Rolls-Royce engines Trent 500 (A340), Trent 700 (A330) and Trent 900 (A380). N3's future production programme now also includes the most important engine type, the Trent XWB (A350). The company currently looks after the repair and overhaul needs of more than 50 national and international customers.
Project manager Andrew Elvidge, who was responsible for the initiation of this engine type at N3, looks back over the past few months: "The introduction of the Trent XWB was an exciting time for all of us. The whole team had to familiarise themselves with new assembly and stripping technologies and approaches, and had to learn how to repair the components of this state-of-the-art engine." Prior to that, the N3 staff completed intensive initial and further training on an Rolls-Royce Trent XWB training engine, acquired plenty of knowledge and tried out new tools. "The first Trent XWB is now with our customer, and we are looking forward to the next engines that will gradually find their way to us," says Elvidge.
The Rolls-Royce Trent XWB engine will have a considerable impact on N3's business in the next few years. Due to its efficiency and reliability, the A350, which is powered by the Trent XWB engine, is currently the most rapidly selling wide-body aircraft. It is becoming increasingly popular with airlines all over the world. "Over the next few years, we will therefore be overhauling an increasing number of Rolls-Royce Trent XWB engines and will continue to expand our capacities," says N3 director and general manager Nicole Fehr. "We will therefore have vacancies for more qualified professionals who will receive additional training with the aid of our own in-house training programme, for example.”
N3 an important partner in Rolls-Royce's international Trent XWB network
Incidentally, the Arnstadt team not only repairs and overhauls Trent XWB motors. Following the launch of the new engine, N3 was the first and only company in Europe contracted by Rolls-Royce to carry out repairs to the blisk components that are the core of the Trent XWB's high pressure compressor as well as the engine pylon components. The Arnstadt-based company now also plays an important role in the production of new Trent XWB engines: for quite some time now, newly manufactured Trent XWB engines have been tested in N3's state-of-the-art engine testing facilities.
The Rolls-Royce Trent XWB is the world's most efficient civilian wide-body aircraft engine and was developed especially for the Airbus A350 XWB family. The abbreviation XWB stands for"extra wide body" and refers to the aircraft type A350, which offers more space and comfort to its passengers due to its wider body. The Trent XWB has more than 20,000 components and delivers between 75,000 and 97,000 pounds of thrust – whilst also making the A350 half as noisy as earlier aircraft generations.