FAA Orders Rolls-Royce Trent 700 Compressor Blades Pulled From Service Over a Non-Conforming Repair

The final rule amends Title 14 of the Code of Federal Regulations, Part 39, and is filed under Docket No. FAA-2026-4648 (Amendment 39-23484). It applies to all Rolls-Royce Deutschland Ltd & Co KG RB211 Trent 768-60, 772-60 and 772B-60 engines. It is signed for the FAA by the Acting Deputy Director of the Integrated Certificate Management Division of the Aircraft Certification Service, and is dated 30 September 2026.

The FAA summary says the directive was prompted by a report that a batch of low-pressure compressor (LPC) blades "were exposed to a non-conforming repair" and are more prone to cracking because their configuration deviates from the approved design. The required action is removal of the affected blades from service and replacement with a serviceable part.

The unsafe condition is stated in conditional terms. The FAA says that, if not addressed, the condition could lead to multiple structural failures of the affected parts. That could in turn result in an increased risk of in-flight engine shutdown, engine fire and release of uncontained high-energy debris. The agency's stated purpose is to prevent blade cracking.

An FAA rule that points to a European directive

The FAA rule explains that EASA, which it calls the Technical Agent for the Member States of the European Union, notified it of the unsafe condition under a bilateral agreement. The FAA reviewed the data and concluded that air safety requires the directive.

The chain of European directives is laid out in both documents:

• EASA AD 2024-0130, dated 8 July 2024, first required removal of the affected blades. Its effective date was 22 July 2024.
• EASA AD 2025-0288, dated 17 December 2025, superseded it and added more blades to the list. Its original-issue effective date was 31 December 2025.
• EASA AD 2025-0288R1, issued 26 June 2026 and effective 3 July 2026, is the version the FAA has now adopted.

The FAA first proposed its own rule on 1 June 2026 (91 FR 32364), based on the earlier EASA directive. Between the proposal and the final rule, EASA issued the revision. The only substantive change in the revision concerns a note about refitting a removed blade, discussed below. The FAA replaced the earlier EASA reference with the revised one throughout its text and states that none of its changes increase the economic burden on any operator.

Which blades, and the paper trail behind them

Under the EASA directive, affected LPC blades are those carrying part numbers FW23741, FW23643, FW23744, KH23403 or KH23404 and a serial number on an approved list. The directive splits them into two groups.

Group A blades are those whose serial numbers appear in Appendix 1 of Rolls-Royce Alert Non-Modification Service Bulletin RB.211-72-AL053, Revision 1. Group B blades are the nine serial numbers added by the later EASA directive and listed in a table within it. The EASA table is headed "Fan Blades," a label that appears in the document as printed; the directive itself defines the affected parts as LP compressor blades.

Blades that passed an in-shop inspection under a second Rolls-Royce bulletin, RB.211-72-L104, are excluded. The EASA text says Rolls-Royce issued that bulletin to allow affected parts that pass its inspection criteria to be released back to service. Blades that passed that re-inspection are therefore not covered by the removal requirement.

The directive describes the underlying issue this way: a batch of LP compressor blades had been exposed in service to erroneous repair work, leaving their configuration different from the approved design, and these blades are prone to cracking. Neither the FAA rule nor the EASA directive says where or by whom the repairs were carried out, and neither says how the blades differ from the approved design.

Rolls-Royce issued the original service bulletin on 1 May 2024. Revision 1, which added the nine further serial numbers, is dated 31 July 2025.

Compliance times

The directive's timing rests on a figure it calls the cycles to removal from the date of the applicable authorised release certificate (ARC). The ARC date is the date of the certificate issued after the maintenance visit during which the non-conforming repair was done. Each blade has its own cycle limit counted from that date.

For the nine Group B blades, the table in the EASA directive lists cycle limits that run from 5,100 to 9,673 cycles, with ARC dates between February 2017 and April 2022. Group A limits sit in Appendix 1 of the Rolls-Royce bulletin, which was not available for this article.

The removal rule is the later of two points. An operator must remove each affected blade before it exceeds its own cycle limit, or within the time set in a compliance table, whichever occurs later. The table sets that time as 30 flight cycles or 30 days after the relevant reference date, whichever comes first. For Group A blades the reference date in the EASA text is 22 July 2024. For Group B blades it is 31 December 2025.

The FAA changes those anchors. Where the EASA directive refers to its own effective date, or to the 22 July 2024 date, the FAA rule says to use the effective date of the FAA directive instead. The practical effect is that the 30-cycle and 30-day clocks run from the date the U.S. rule takes effect.

Two further requirements round out the directive:

• Shop visits. From 31 December 2025, before an engine carrying an affected blade is released to service after a shop visit, any affected blade with 100 flight cycles or fewer of remaining life must be replaced with a serviceable part.
• Installation ban. Operators may not fit an affected blade to any engine, whether or not that engine currently carries one.

The refitting note that changed

The one technical change in the June 2026 revision concerns a note on what counts as "installation." The original wording allowed a removed blade to be put back only in its original position on the same engine, and only within a single on-wing maintenance activity. EASA determined that wording was too restrictive and removed the words "on the same position."

Under the revised note, removing an affected blade and reinstalling that same blade on the same engine during a single maintenance activity is not treated as installing an affected part, regardless of the position it goes back into. The FAA's final rule reflects this by adopting the revised EASA directive.

Effective date

The FAA rule says it takes effect 35 days after publication in the Federal Register. The text was published in placeholder form in the public-inspection copy, with the date to be inserted at publication. With a publication date of 13 October 2026, 35 days later is 17 November 2026, by our own count.

Cost and scope in the United States

The FAA estimates the directive affects eight engines installed on aircraft of U.S. registry. It puts the cost at $225,000 per engine in parts plus two work-hours of labour at $85 an hour, or $170, for a total of $225,170 per engine and $1,801,360 across the U.S. fleet. The documents do not identify which operators hold those engines.

The EASA directive says the covered engines are known to be installed on, but not limited to, Airbus A330 aircraft. The FAA text does not name an aircraft type.

Differences between the FAA and EASA texts

The FAA rule lists three departures from the EASA directive. The first two are the date substitutions described above. The third is that the FAA does not adopt the "Remarks" paragraph of the EASA text.

There is also a scope difference. The EASA directive applies to the Trent 772C-60 as well as the three variants the FAA lists. The FAA says its rule does not cover that model because it does not have an FAA type certificate.

Alternative methods of compliance may be requested from the FAA through the Continued Operational Safety Branch. The EASA directive likewise allows the agency to approve alternative methods of compliance if requested and substantiated.

Comments received

The FAA received one comment on the proposal, from the Air Line Pilots Association, International. The association supported the proposal without change, according to the rule.

EASA's own consultation on the original directive, from 20 October to 17 November 2025, drew no comments, according to its text.

What the documents leave open

Both texts are narrow. They identify blades by part and serial number, describe a cracking tendency, and set removal times. They do not describe a failure, incident or investigation, or say how many blades are in the Group A batch, since the Group A list sits in a Rolls-Royce bulletin that operators obtain through the manufacturer's customer portal.

The FAA points inquiries to an aviation safety engineer in its Des Moines, Washington, engineering office, and the EASA text directs technical questions to Rolls-Royce.

Sources

• Federal Register, "Airworthiness Directives; Rolls-Royce Deutschland Ltd & Co KG Engines," final rule, FR Doc. 2026-20869 (public inspection copy), FAA / U.S. Department of Transportation, publication date 13 October 2026.
• European Union Aviation Safety Agency, Airworthiness Directive 2025-0288R1, "Engine - Low Pressure Compressor Blades - Removal from Service," issued 26 June 2026 (ad.easa.europa.eu).