In remarks made during their full year earnings, EADS had noted how it had used up “some of the previous buffers” for the A350XWB’s development. Concerns seem to be growing that there could be slippages in the program although Airbus continues to assert that entry into service for the baseline A350-900 model will still occur in 2013.
As one of the biggest customers for the A350XWB family, Emirates has made known its concerns about delays in the program with a stinging rebuke about execution and program margins. Emirates President Tim Clark was cited by Aviation Week as saying “we have clearly told Airbus that we will not accept again what they did to us with the A380.“
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Clark goes on:
“We have told Airbus numerous times that in our view they should build in more margin in terms of time and performance parameters, but they wanted to have it their way. Now they are already eating into margins.“
“All I have to do is pick up the phone and order more Boeing 777s,” he said.
Emirates has stated recently that it may be poised to order more 777′s, and in comments made to the JP Morgan conference last week, Boeing Commercial Airplanes’ CEO Jim Albaugh said that he “anticipated more 777 orders in the near term.“
While it remains to be seen if Emirates’ concerns extrapolate into serious program delays, Teal Group’s Richard Aboulafia has already surmised that the A350XWB could be up to two years late. It was these same sorts of musings that led to the crippling delays on Boeing’s flagship 787 program but Arran Aerospace Founder & Chief Consultant Doug McVitie noted that Airbus is deliberately “delaying the inevitable.”
“They know the airplane is going to be late, they just don’t want to admit it,” he said.
Airbus has tentatively marked the first quarter of 2012 for the A350-900′s first flight with service entry around the middle of 2013.
Didier Evrard, head of the A350XWB program says that Airbus is “developing this aircraft faster and putting in place a lot of new enablers in developing a new industrial vision, a new way of doing business with our suppliers and of doing customisation with our customers.”
Emirates is concerned that this rapid-paced approach is ultimately going to “undo” further program buffers and that the customisation which has debilitated the A380 production will rear its head again on the A350XWB. Radio silence from launch customer Qatar Airways adds to the uncertainty, particularly given its deep criticism over the lack of engineering information when the A350XWB was launched.
While delays on new programs seems to have become an accepted norm within the last half decade, the bigger problem is the waiting game for airlines – will there, or won’t there be delays on the A350XWB?
Right now it’s pretty hard to bet against the views of Aboulafia and McVitie when Emirates has been so vivid in its comments to Airbus.
