People lined the street in their thousands to catch a glimpse of the prize.
But this was not Manchester and it was not the Premier League trophy being paraded in front of adoring fans.
This was Derby and the “trophy” was the Trent XWB engine. Yesterday marked the moment the engine was being sent to Toulouse for “entry into service”; there, it will be fitted to the new Airbus A350, which is due to be delivered to the first customer, Qatar Airways, by the end of the year.
Leading the parade was an open-top bus, and on it were Rolls-Royce employees who had worked on the engine alongside their counterparts from Airbus.
The XWB engine being paraded through the streets of Derby
From the top of the bus, Chris Young, the director of the Trent XWB programme who has worked on the engine since the very start back in 2006, gave a speech of thanks to the thousands of staff who had also been part of the journey, ensuring it was delivered on time to Airbus.
“This is an exciting moment for all of us,” he said, telling them what an important day it was for Rolls-Royce.
He was not exaggerating. The XWB engine is the fastest-selling large engine in the history of civil aviation, with more than 1,600 already sold to 40 customers. The reason is simple. It is the world’s most fuel-efficient jet engine.
“This is probably the most important programme we have ever had in Rolls-Royce, because of the size of it,” said Eric Schulz, president of Civil Large Engines.
“The fuel price has grown over the past 20 years and today it accounts for 50pc of the cost of flying an aircraft. That is why it is vital that we develop the right technologies to make the engines more fuel efficient.”
The XWB alone makes up 53pc of Rolls-Royce’s aerospace order book, which is valued at £60bn. That is quite remarkable, given that the first ever XWB engine that will be used on a customer’s plane was only sent yesterday.
Airbus has estimated that it will sell roughly 2,000 A350s, which means Rolls will have to produce another 3,999 engines to meet demand. The first XWB engine, which is being shipped down to the Airbus factory in Toulouse where it will be fitted, will be followed in just a couple of weeks by the second one. Expectations for this year are that it will deliver 30 of these engines, with the aim of making one engine a day by 2017.
That is no mean feat. The engines are so large that the body of a Concorde could fit through the engine; some 1.5 tonnes of air passes through the engine every second and is compressed down 50 times.
That is the equivalent of the amount of air in an area the size of a squash court being sucked through the engine every second. It is then squeezed down in size to the equivalent air space of a microwave oven.
At take-off, each fan blade will each carry a load of roughly 90 tonnes, which is the equivalent of nine London buses.
The blades within the engine heat up to 1,700 degrees Celsius, which is actually hotter than the metal’s melting point of 1,300 degrees, so a clever cooling system has been created to ensure they don’t melt.
The XWB engine will only power the new A350. Rolls-Royce came up with the concept for the engine in 2006 and signed the contract with Airbus shortly after.
Since then, the engine has gone through roughly 6,600 hours of testing and since its first test flight in June 2013 it has been subjected to high altitude testing in Bolivia, hot weather testing in Al Ain in the United Arab Emirates, and cold weather testing in Iqaluit, Canada.
An A350 undergoing cold weather testing
Delivering the first Trent XWB to a customer was a “critical moment”, said Mr Schulz. “We’ve benefited from the test flights and learnt a lot to ensure all the adjustments have been made”.
Rolls has been testing extensively to ensure there is no repeat of the engine explosion that occurred on a Qantas A380 flight in November 2010.
The engine disintegrated shortly after take-off from Singapore due to an “uncontained engine failure”, the Australian Transport Safety Board found, which added that Rolls had missed several opportunities to identify the problem.
Rolls’ own investigation found that the problem affected only its Trent 900 engine and that the engine failure “was confined to a specific component” which led to an oil fire and loss of turbine pressure.