London, UK—British long-haul and leisure operator Virgin Atlantic considers delaying the retirement of its remaining three Airbus A340-600 due to the ongoing Rolls Royce Trent 1000 problems powering the airline's Dreamliners.
This year in July, Virgin Atlantic had announced that the British carrier to remove its remaining Airbus A340s from the fleet by the end of the year.
While no decisions have been made, due to ongoing supply issues with 787 Rolls-Royce engines, our A340-600s may remain flying a little longer than planned,
the airline said in an email statement published on Dec.16.
Rolls-Royce has recently announced that it would take the British engine manufacturer longer than expected to fix its Trent 1000 engines that led some airlines around the world to ground their Boeing 787-9s.
The company faces 1.6 billion pounds ($2 billion) in extra costs due to the poor durability of the Trent 1000s' turbine blades. The company aims to reduce the number of grounded 787s to single figures until the second quarter of 2020.