A380 delivery slips will be massive and are the airlines to blame?

Thursday, 20 Jun, 2006 0

Aviation sources are reporting that the knock-on effect of the A380 delivery delays will continue to impact right through 2007, 2008 and 2009, resulting in a delivery shortfall of between 22 and 31 aircraft.

Singapore Airlines was to have received its first aircraft before the end of 2006, but that will not happen until well into 2007, with deliveries of the remainder of its original order, being delayed well into next year.

Airbus expects to deliver only nine of the 25 aircraft expected next year, with the other early buyers, Emirates and Qantas now not receiving their first aircraft until the end of 2007, at least six months late.

A380 delivery schedule
Year	Original Delivery Schedule	New Delivery Schedule	Delivery Shortfall
2006	2	1	1
2007	20-25	9	11-16
2008	35	26-30	5-9
2009	45	40	5
Total	102-107	76-80	5
Note: forecast beyond 2007 is “worst-case scenario” and as a result provisional Source: Airbus

The full impact on 2008 and 2009 deliveries is yet to be established with Airbus saying that the new delivery forecast it has released for those two years is the worse-case scenario.

In addition, while deliveries to China Southern Airlines have been delayed, it will still receive its first A380 in time for the 2008 Olympics in Beijing.

“We don’t see any impact on our delivery slots beyond 2009,” says Airbus president and CEO Gustav Humbert.

He added that the delay resulted from a production bottleneck created by the huge workload to integrate electrical systems and harnesses into the A380, that a recovery action plan had started and that some of the actions have now been implemented and some will be more or less defined in the next four weeks and will be effective from July.

Didier Lux, Executive Vice-President of quality at Airbus, said that much of the blame lies with late specification changes for cabin equipment, “Airbus has been ‘trapped’ by late modifications, with the seats and in-flight entertainment definitions not been frozen until very late in the process.”

Report by John Alwyn-Jones from ATE 2006

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