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Cathay Pacific is slowly putting planes back in the sky after it grounded all of its Airbus A350 aircraft and launched an investigation into the planes’ Rolls-Royce engines.
The Hong Kong-based airline said Monday that it is carrying out a precautionary inspection of the A350 fleet after it cancelled several flights upon finding a component failure in its Rolls-Royce Trent XWB-97 engines on a flight from Hong Kong to Zurich.
“This component was the first of its type to suffer such failure on any A350 aircraft worldwide,” Cathay said in a statement. Through its inspection, the airline identified “a number of the same engine components that need to be replaced.”
In an update Tuesday, Cathay said it found the engine component failure in 15 of its 48 A350 aircraft after a thorough inspection. According to the airline, it has already resolved the issue in three of its aircraft, and expects to resume operations as usual by Sept. 7 once repairs and inspections are completed.
On Wednesday, Cathay expects to cancel an 10 additional regional return flights, the airline said.
While Cathay hasn’t confirmed what the issues were, Bloomberg reports that Cathay found deformed or degraded fuel lines within the Rolls-Royce engines.
Rolls-Royce confirmed that its engines were involved in the cancellations and inspections in a statement Tuesday. It said that it is “committed to working closely with the airline, aircraft manufacturer and the relevant authorities to support their efforts.”
That includes “providing support and guidance to Cathay,” keeping other airlines that use Trent XWB-97-powered aircraft “fully informed of any relevant developments as appropriate.”
Several major airlines operate the Airbus planes that use the engines, including Qatar Airways, British Airways, Japan Airlines, and Virgin Atlantic.
Airbus stock fell 2% in pre-market trading Tuesday. Shares of Rolls-Royce dipped 0.6% Tuesday.
Airbus has had trouble capitalizing on the brutal year had by Boeing, its biggest rival. In June, Airbus cut its outlook for the rest of the year due to hurdles in both its space and commercial airlines divisions. This year so far, the French planemaker’s stock has remained flat — despite the opportunities to scoop up business from Boeing, which has been embroiled in a series of scandals since a door plug blew off one of its 737 Max 9 planes and invited a massive amount of regular and investor scrutiny.