ANA Holdings Inc., which has canceled more than a dozen Dreamliner flights since last week, found broken turbines on three Boeing 787s driven by engines made by Rolls-Royce Holdings PLC.
The broken turbine blade parts damaged other sections of the engine when they snapped off, Maho Ito, a spokeswoman at ANA, said by telephone Monday. The first incident happened in February, when one engine was shut down and the plane returned to Singapore, while the most recent happened on Aug. 20 on a domestic flight, according to the carrier.
The airline, the world's biggest operator of 787s, may cancel more than 300 Dreamliner flights through the end of September as it checks engines on its fleet of 50 of the marquee jets, the company said Thursday. Last week, Rolls-Royce said the problem is limited to a small proportion of the ANA fleet and that it is working with the carrier to lessen the impact.
The Sankei newspaper reported the damage to the engines on Sunday.
The issue, ANA's biggest with the model since a 2013 global grounding of the entire Dreamliner fleet, came to the fore after corrosion was found on the turbine blades that led to an aircraft having to shut down a power plant. Rolls-Royce will start supplying ANA with modified versions of the turbine blades from January and the carrier will replace the current blades in all its planes, ANA said last week.
With your current subscription plan you can comment on stories. However, before writing your first comment, please create a display name in the Profile section of your subscriber account page.