Loss-making Indian carrier Kingfisher Airlines is speaking to Airbus to try and defer by two years the delivery of the Airbus A380s it has on order.
A spokesman in Mumbai for Kingfisher says it wants to delay the deliveries to 2014 from 2012 "because we want to go for a high take-off weight option" so the aircraft can operate non-stop from India to the USA.
The spokesman was unable to say if Airbus has agreed to this request.
This is just the latest in a series of delays to Kingfisher's A380s.
In 2005 the airline ordered five A380s for delivery in 2010 but production delays at Airbus meant the delivery dates slipped to 2011.
Then last year Kingfisher's chairman Vijay Mallya told ATI that the delivery date had been pushed back again to 2012 at the behest of the airline.
The airline's move to delay A380 deliveries comes at a time when it is losing millions.
It has already delayed the delivery of some other aircraft from Airbus such as Airbus A320s and Airbus A340s.
Kingfisher was hoping to launch services in 2008 to San Francisco and services to several other international destinations, mostly in South Asia and Southeast Asia.
But according to details on the Kingfisher website it remains mostly a domestic operator and its only international services are to Colombo and London Heathrow.
The airline late last year announced that it would be scaling back its international expansion plans and would instead codeshare on some of the international flights of its Indian rival Jet Airways.
Source: Air Transport Intelligence news
