Posted on 06/01/2005 5:32:47 PM PDT by Nachum
PARIS - The Airbus A380 may have overcome its weight problem, but the full cost of beating the bulge looked set to mount Wednesday as the European plane maker confirmed delivery delays of up to six months.
"We've now spoken to A380 customers and told them how they will be affected," Airbus spokesman David Velupillai said. "The delays range from two to six months depending on the customer."
Airbus, which is betting on the A380 to maintain the lead it took over U.S. rival Boeing Co. in 2003, had warned launch customer Singapore Airlines Ltd. in April that it would receive its planes late next year instead of in March. Singapore CEO Chew Choon Seng has since said he plans to demand compensation.
But the Toulouse-based plane maker conceded Wednesday that the delay could affect other A380 customers, after Air France-KLM Group, Emirates and Australia's Qantas Airways Ltd. said they too were expecting their superjumbos late.
Qantas said its 12 new A380s will arrive six months late because of "manufacturing issues," and confirmed it will be seeking financial redress.
"This is disappointing, given that we have met all of Airbus' deadlines for Qantas specifications," said CEO Geoff Dixon.
Emirates said it did not yet know how late its A380s will arrive but hinted that it would be seeking compensation. "We will expect Airbus to fully meet its obligations in accordance with the contract between our two companies," the Dubai-based carrier said.
Shares in European Aeronautic Defence and Space Co., which owns 80 percent of Airbus fell as much as 2.2 percent in early trading before recovering to close just 0.3 percent lower at 23.97 euros ($29.31). BAE Systems, which owns the remaining 20 percent of Airbus, closed 1.5 percent higher at 2.73 pounds ($4.97) in London.
Like most new airliners in development, the A380 struggled to keep its weight down and meet ambitious specifications promised to customers. Final assembly line director Jean-Claude Schoepf and his engineers sent parts back to the drawing board to be pared down, and even the paint was redesigned.
Confounding earlier reports that the plane would be 5 percent overweight, the A380 finally weighed in empty at 309 tons — just 1 percent over its original working target.
But the design challenge, as well as a decision to produce more freighter versions, contributed to a cost overrun estimated by Airbus CEO Noel Forgeard at 1.45 billion euros ($1.77 billion).
Airbus declined to comment on its exposure to compensation claims, insisting the terms of its sales contracts remain confidential. But it played down their potential impact on the program's profitability.
In any aircraft program, Velupillai said, "deliveries begin slowly in the early years and pick up pace later on so the effects will be limited."
He also refused to say how many of the A380's 15 existing customers were affected by the delays. "Clearly the early customers are more likely to be affected than the later ones," he said.
But Deutsche Lufthansa AG, which had not been expecting its first A380s until late 2007, said it too had been warned that they may arrive later.
"In a general way we have been told, but for the specific amount of time of possible delay we were not given any details," said Lufthansa spokesman Michael Lamberty.
Air France has also postponed its planned April 2007 launch of A380 services because of the production setback. "Airbus has advised us that there will be a delivery delay," said a Paris-based spokesman for Air France-KLM, which groups the merged French and Dutch carriers Air France and KLM. He declined to discuss compensation.
They should change the name of the company to "Airbust"!
The sweet smell of Euro Rot.
Must have run out of "super-glue"
Now what? More titanium over aluminum? More composites? Nah - new paint.......Sounds so French.
There's a TV documentary about how they build this thing. Freakin' unbelievable! They built big sections in different countries, then have to haul huge chunks from country A to country B on ships, river barges, and trucks. (The barge just cleared the bridges.) No wonder they can't get any built on time!
http://www.aerospace-technology.com/projects/a380/ :
"A380 aircraft sections will be transported from sites in Broughton (UK), Hamburg (Germany), Puerto Real (Spain) and St Nazaire (France) in a specially constructed huge roll-on/roll-off vessel, the "Ville de Bordeaux", built by Jinling Shipyard in Nanjing, China. The vessel was launched in July 2003 and has the largest water stern door (22m x 14m) ever built on a ro-ro vessel. The vessel will take the components to Bordeaux. From there they will be transported via specially constructed barges up the Garonne River and then transferred by road trailer to the final assembly line in Toulouse."
"No wonder they can't get any built on time! "
The main reason would be that it's built by a bunch of socialist weasels.
It doesn't matter how they arrive, just how often.
Contrast that to the way boeing is building the 787. They have outfitted special 747's to schlep the sections from country to country and state to state. Much more efficient and fast.
Another Euro-debacle...
It is a make-work project (like most socialist "enterprises"). Sinc it is subsidised by various European countries, each one has to have a part in the production system so that unemployment rates can be kept artificially low (low by modern European standards). They chose an inefficient transit network for components so that there will be plenty of jobs to spread around at rate-payers expense.
Mumbo Jumbo
...your boat
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