Travel rebound buoying demand at Rolls-Royce, chief says
The outgoing boss of Rolls-Royce Warren East said a rebound in air travel after covid was buoying demand at the jet-engine maker as he issued a bullish outlook for aviation in the face of a global recession.
The FTSE-100 engineering giant, which counts Boeing and Airbus among its client base, was exposed to a slowdown in air travel through covid-19 as aircraft required fewer refits due to less flying time.
But a rebound in the market amid normalised travel restrictions had seen demand pick back up, East said.
“Over the last three to six months, we’ve seen a step … increase in the level and intensity of commercial discussions with our airline partners, as they think about their future fleet requirements,” he said, as reported in the Times.
Rolls-Royce Head of civil aerospace Chris Collerton added that the firm had seen a “very encouraging recovery”, the Times reported, particularly in Europe and North America despite flights being battered by widespread disruption in the past months.
Fears of a looming global recession and cost of living crunch will not necessarily dampen the aviation sector’s recover, East said.
“These are two things superimposed on each other: there’s the recovery from Covid, which is like the tide coming in; and then there’s a recession, which is like the wind blowing the tide in one direction or another,” he told the Times.
The comments come after East, who is preparing to step down this year after seven years at the helm, warned at the Farnborough Airshow last week that the switch to sustainable fuel was set to hit the bottom line of aviation firms.
“We will see cost rises in transportation,” East told the Mail. “That’s just an adjustment, you can’t get something for nothing.We clearly want to be able to continue to move goods around the world by air, but without trashing the planet.”
Transport secretary Grant Shapps announced last week that government will introduce a requirement for at least 10 per cent of jet fuel to be made from sustainable sources by 2030.
East told the airshow that the “energy transition and the need for zero-carbon power transcends any change in government.”