Andrea Rothman Toulouse
Airbus chief executive Fabrice Bregier sought to bolster the case for the A380, saying the superjumbo’s best days were still ahead, amid speculation that the programme might be scrapped in a few years because of slack demand.
Speaking at a press conference to review 2014 and provide an outlook into 2015, Bregier said the A380 had proven itself both commercially and from a manufacturing point of view, with 30 planes delivered last year to customers including first-time operators Etihad Airways and Qatar Airways. Reliability in service was also good, he said.
“This aircraft remains a solid pillar of Airbus’s wide-body family,” Bergier told reporters yesterday in Toulouse, France, where the company is based. “With the A330, the A350 and the A380 we have the most modern and extended wide-body family.”
The future of the A380 was thrown into doubt last month when Airbus chief financial officer Harald Wilhelm told investors in London that discontinuing the programme might be one option after 2018, when the order book for the largest commercial airliner starts to thin out.
Tough sell
The model failed to win a single new order from an airline customer last year, gaining only one commitment from a leasing company for 20 units.
The A380, which typically seats about 525 passengers, has become a tougher sell in part because airlines rely on slightly smaller and more fuel-efficient wide-body airliners to pack in large numbers of travellers. Boeing has cut back output of its latest 747-8i jumbo several times amid sluggish sales.
Airbus was on track to break even with the A380 this year, Bregier said. The company aims to deliver about 30 units each year, and win orders for about the same number of aircraft, which costs $414.4 million (R4.8 billion) at 2014 list prices. – Bloomberg