A380 to be delayed by at least another ten months

Airbus’s parent company EADS has announced that delivery of the first Airbus A380 will be delayed for at least another 10 months, bringing the cost of successive delays to 4.8 billion euros.

EADS also said that a revised delivery schedule meant thirteen 380’s are scheduled to be produced in 2008, twenty five the following year and forty five in 2010, with Qantas not receiving delivery until 2008.

New Airbus head Christian Streiff said that because of continuing problems related to electrical wiring, the first A380 would not be delivered to its first customer, Singapore Airlines, until October 2007, the only 380 to be delivered in 2007.

Streiff explained the reason why Airbus had not yet been able to ramp-up the production, was that the issue of the electrical harnesses is extremely complex, with 530km of cables, 100,000 wires, and 40,300 connectors. He said that it is twice as complex as for our next largest aircraft, the A340-600 and the depth of the problem was not fully understood in June and the full analysis over these past weeks has revealed it is much worse than expected.

Streiff said,  “The root cause of the issue is that there were incompatibilities in the development of the concurrent engineering tools to be used for the design of the electrical harnesses installation and quite simply, while the A380 is the most-advanced and modern plane ever made, the wiring harness installation design package in the forward and rear fuselage could not keep pace with the rest of the aircraft programme and also, the learning curve for wiring harness changes was too steep during the complex development phase”.  “We have to update and harmonize the 3D design tools and data base and it will take time to do this”.

“The problem became first apparent when the electrical harnesses were installed into the fuselage as there were mismatches between the designed routing of the electrical harnesses and the real aircraft”.

He said, “I want to be very clear: the problem we are tackling does in no way put into question the integrity, quality or safety of the A380’s that have been produced to date, which are flying today and which are part of the first production wave”.

Streiff added that delivery delays which now total about 22 months have not led to any customer cancelling orders, saying, “The customers believe in the aircraft and are willing to help us”.

The Head of Emirates Airlines, Tim Clark, said yesterday though that the airline would have to consider its options after Airbus had informed his company that delivery of the plane would be postponed for an additional 10 months, adding, “This is a very serious problem for Emirates and we will now examine all of our options.”

It is anticipated that Qantas will offer its comments and response today.

Report by The Mole