Yesterday's story about the millionth ETOPS flight by a 777 on 11 May 07 brought up a query about 777 engine failures: That elicited this response:
Dated July 2006:
"To date, the GE90-115B has experienced no in-flight shutdowns (IFS) and enjoys an engine departure reliability of 99.97 percent. There have been no forced engine removals and only two scheduled engine removals.....The GE90-115B builds upon the reliability of its predecessor, the GE90-94B engine for the 777-200ER. With more than 7.4 million flight-hours accumulated, the -94B has an engine-caused in-flight shutdown rate of 0.0014 while flying more than 90 ETOPS routes. "
Note: Pursuant to this enviable record, Air France had an engine shutdown over the Atlantic with one of their 777's soon after delivery (and not so long ago) [
from link].
The current ETOPS rating for a 777-200 and 777-300? For US airlines: most are given 180 minute diversion allotment times in most areas; though they do not always operate them to that level, preferring often to remain within a 138 minute diversion area. Some carriers have the authority to operate 207 minute allotments over northern transpacific and transpolar routings only, on a case-by-case basis.