In normal times, August should be a boom time for Rolls Royce.
It follows the traditional Farnborough and Paris airshows, staged in alternating summers, when the aviation industry shows off futuristic new technology, seals deals and generally schmoozes. Rolls typically entertains clients on the balcony of its multi-story chalet, allowing the flight displays to steal attention away from the company’s pre-existing problems.
Not this year, however. Covid-19 saw the aerospace jamboree cancelled, replaced by online seminars that did little to draw focus away from the catastrophic collapse in air transport.
Even the more optimistic predictions for the recovery of the airline industry expect it will be at least two years before there is a return to pre-pandemic levels, and that’s just for short-haul flights.
With its large engines for wide-body jets Rolls is particularly focused on long haul; experts reckon this area of the civil aerospace market could to take five years to get back to normal.
To give an idea of the scale of the crisis facing Rolls, before Covid-19 struck about half of the company’s £15bn annual revenues came from selling and servicing airliner engines, much of it on “power by the hour” deals whereby customers paid only for what they used.
According to analysis by consultancy Cirium, in January wide-body airliners powered by Rolls engines recorded about 22,000 flying hours per day. This plunged as low as 3,000 hours per day in early April, and is currently at about only 30pc of normal levels.