Yada Yada
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theaustralian.news.com.au said:
Superjumbo stalled another year
Steve Creedy
October 04, 2006
DELIVERIES of Airbus's flagship A380 superjumbo will be delayed for up to another year after problems at the European manufacturer turned out to be worse than thought.
The extra delay is likely to put off the superjumbo's entry into service on the Singapore-Sydney route until later next year and see Qantas deliveries delayed well into 2008.
The board of Airbus parent company EADS met yesterday and was expected to confirm as early as today that the troubled program's third delay would be longer than airlines were initially led to believe. Deliveries are also expected to be slower.
Airbus insiders last month gave some hint of the extent of the problem when they warned that deliveries to Qantas and Emirates, already delayed twice, would not take place until the first quarter of 2008.
Speculation yesterday was that Airbus's new production schedule would mean those deliveries would now not take place until later that year, putting them two years behind.
There were also suggestions delivery of the first plane to Singapore Airlines would be put back from December to the second half of next year. Singapore had planned to launch the aircraft this year and had been running an extensive campaign telling people it would be first to fly the A380. The delay will force the launch airlines to find other planes to service planned A380 routes and angry carriers will claim further compensation, already estimated to be costing Airbus E2 billion ($3.4 billion). Qantas has already booked $104 million in compensation for the first two delays to its 12 A380s and has indicated it will seek additional compensation for further delays.
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rawstory.com said:Another A380 delay would delay retirement of B747-400s in Singapore
dpa German Press Agency
Published: Tuesday October 3, 2006
Singapore- A third delay in the delivery of the Airbus 380 superjumbo jet would postpone Singapore Airlines' retirement of its fleet of Boeing 747-400s, company spokesman Stephen Forshaw said in a report published Tuesday.
"The consequences of the A380 delay is the inability to grow capacity on the flights where we would like to replace 747-400s with the larger A380s," Forshaw told The Business Times amid reports from Toulouse, France, that Airbus would soon be informing clients such as Singapore Airlines, Emirates Airline and Qantas Airways that the delivery schedule could be pushed back by up to another six months.
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Bad news for all concerned. This may see some interesting knock-on effects in many airlines looking for capacity.