Airbus parent EADS has confirmed there will be further delays to A380 deliveries, although it is not yet providing specific details.
EADS says in a statement that “from what is known today, there will be further delays”.
It adds: “The current status is that we have not finalised the schedule of deliveries nor the financial impact of any delays.”
The statement comes in response to media reports in recent days that the A380 programme is facing delays beyond those that were announced earlier this year.
EADS is non-committal regarding the timeframe within which it will disclose the extent of delays to Airbus A380 deliveries, as it awaits the completion of a programme review.
While Airbus has maintained that the review will be completed towards the end of September, EADS says only that it will provide more detailed information “within four weeks”.
A spokeswoman for EADS insists that specific dates for receiving and assessing the review data are “not confirmed” beyond being narrowed to late September or early October.
Some reports have said early customers could face additional delays of up to half a year and that in 2007 Airbus may only be able to deliver four A380s.
In June Airbus said production complications meant the already delayed first A380 delivery, to Singapore Airlines, would be pushed back to the end of this year and that next year only nine A380s would be delivered, far fewer than originally planned.
The fallout from the June announcement, which came after several earlier delays in the programme, resulted in the removal of Airbus CEO Gustav Humbert and EADS co-CEO Noel Forgeard.
Forgeard was replaced by French railway chief Louis Gallois while Humbert was replaced by Christian Streiff, former deputy CEO of Saint-Gobain. The new management announced an extensive review of the A380 programme that would be completed around the end of September.
EADS says in its statement today that it “does not confirm nor deny specific information reported by various media relating to the A380 programme because the review of the programme is not completed yet”.
It adds: “Although [the] company’s assessment is still underway, continuing industrialisation challenges with the wiring of production aircraft have been identified and are being tackled.
“All appropriate resources are focused on bringing the ongoing assessment to maturity. EADS and Airbus will provide more detailed information within four weeks as Airbus is currently working on developing action plans and a solid delivery schedule to its customers. In the meantime flight testing milestones of the A380 are progressing as planned.”
Source: FlightGlobal.com
