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Since the beginning of time, Airbus and Boeing have waged war over whose new plane program is less messed up. This week, Airbus is the one feeling the heat.
The company has been slammed in the media after it was revealed that Emirates Airlines, the largest customer of its A380 double-decker superjumbo, has presented the airline with a laundry list of problems with the plane that it wants fixed. It's bad news for an aircraft program plagued by delivery delays and questions about whether it can be operated profitably at a time when airline traffic is in free fall.
Air Transport World reports on a scathing story from German news mag Der Spiegel telling of a "crisis meeting" between Emirates and Airbus earlier this year. At that meeting, Emirates allegedly rolled a 46-slide PowerPoint laying out its issues with the plane. These include singed power cables, defective thrust nozzles, and shoddy paneling. In one of the more bizarre incidents, a woman trying to operate a A380 onboard shower ripped the fixture out of the wall and flooded the first class cabin.
The various problems are said to have cost Emirates 500 hours of lost flying time.
Pissing off a customer that has ordered $31 billion worth of your planes is not good for business, which is why Airbus is bending over backwards to make things right with Emirates. It's expanded the rapid response team it deploys to deal with A380 issues, has begun storing spare parts in cities where the A380 operates, and is beefing up its system for tracking and addressing problems.
Emirates says things aren't as bad as the media is making them out to be. Tim Clark, the airline's president, told ATW Online that Emirates is pleased with the A380, and that Airbus has responded quickly to its concerns. "The situation has been overblown," he said.
Still, all the Emirates drama adds to questions about Airbus' big-picture strategy. It has bet the farm on building the world's largest passenger plane, which it says allows airlines to feed ever-more customers into big hub airports. Boeing's doing things differently, focusing on the 787 Dreamliner, a smaller, fuel efficient plane perfect for direct flights between medium sized cities. Boeing has sold more than 875 Dreamliners vs. 225 orders for the A380. That's a scary number for Airbus, because industry experts say the company needs to sell 400 380s just to break even.
In some more disturbing news for Airbus, Emirates announced this week that it was pulling the A380 off its high profile New York JFK-Dubai route, saying there aren't enough passengers to fill the plane. "As the global economy has affected international air travel, this aircraft redeployment was based solely on a change in capacity demands," the airline said in a statement.
But don't count Airbus out. The company thinks it can squeeze 400 more orders out of its existing customer base, and airlines waiting for their A380s to roll of the assembly line have big plans. Besides, it was just a few months ago that people were abuzz about problems with the Home Depot-sourced temporary fasteners being used for the 787. The way this industry works, it is just a matter of time before the harsh glare of media scrutiny shifts away from Airbus. Again.
Check out the cool microsite Lufthansa has put together about its A380.
Photo: Emirates
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