Every Airbus A350 ever built flies with the same engine. Over more than a decade of production and with more than 60 airline customers, no operator has had a choice, a contrast with the Boeing 777 and 787 Dreamliner, which offer customers a choice between General Electric and Rolls-Royce engines. That outcome was not Airbus' preference: General Electric was prepared to supply an engine for the A350-900 and refused to build one for the stretched A350-1000, because the larger aircraft competes directly against the GE-powered Boeing 777. With GE unwilling to cover the full family, Rolls-Royce became the only manufacturer willing to develop an engine specifically for the aircraft, and the arrangement has since been locked in by contract through 2030.
GE had offered a derivative of its GEnx engine family, already selected for the Boeing 787, for the A350-900, but it would not build the higher-thrust engine the A350-1000 required. GE is the sole engine supplier for the Boeing 777-200LR and 777-300ER through the GE90, and developing a 97,000 lb thrust engine for Airbus would have given airlines a GE-powered alternative to the GE-powered 777, cannibalizing a franchise GE already owned outright. Rolls-Royce instead designed the Trent XWB for the A350, powering the A350-900 and A350-1000 at 84,000 lb and 97,000 lb of thrust, with the Trent XWB-97 re-engineered with a larger core, new intermediate-pressure compressor stages and improved cooling to manage higher thermal loads.
Rolls-Royce held exclusivity on the A350-1000 from the start, and on March 11, 2021, during its FY2020 results presentation, it announced that Airbus had extended the A350-900 agreement by five years, taking the Trent XWB-84 to 2030 as the sole powerplant on the variant that accounts for the bulk of the fleet; the previous agreement had been due to expire in 2025. Then-chief executive Warren East said: “We’re already exclusive on the A350-1000, and extending our position on the A350-900 variant, which accounts for the bulk of the A350 fleet, out to 2030 is in line with the development timeline for our next-generation UltraFan engine program.” More than 2,600 Trent XWB engines are in service or on order across over 60 airline customers, and by 2021 the fleet had already accumulated more than seven million flight hours, six years after entry into service.
For airlines, the single engine type simplifies logistics, maintenance and customer support, since an A350 operator maintains one engine type rather than the duplicate inventories and training programs a mixed-engine 777 or 787 fleet requires; LATAM's general terms agreement, for example, covers engines for 27 A350 family aircraft and up to seven spare engines, plus a rate-per-flight-hour shop maintenance agreement with Rolls-Royce TotalCare Services. The exclusivity agreement runs to 2030, and the A350 could technically be dual-sourced from 2031, but the original reason GE declined has not changed, UltraFan remains a technology demonstrator rather than a production engine, and Rolls-Royce's stated priority is now making its existing engines perform better and last longer, with the Trent XWB-84 EP having received EASA certification.
