If Airbus needs to drop a product, it should be the albatross A-380. This is a plane with NO profit potential whatsoever, and keep the A-350, which at least has a possibility for viability in the future.
The pain would be immense, but the 350 at least has the potential to eventually make money - maybe.
if Boeing can increase the production rate on the 787 as they ramp up into volume production, I don't see how Airbus can effectively compete with the 350 either, but at least they will have a saleable product. Eventually.
Are there any advance sales for the 350 yet? Airbus has orders in-hand for the 380 and a lot of angry customers. Those customers would be hopping mad if the 380 were cancelled since they've already invested in the infrastructure to service the beast.
Airbus executives have 1 foot on the dock (the 350) and the ship (the 380) is slowly pulling out. They can't straddle much longer.
They are pretty late in the development cycle. If they bail now, they lose the many billions they've invested in development with no return on that investment.
Even though the A380 may never be profitable, it will likely bring in enough revenues to offset most of the billions they spent developing it.
In other words, they've gone too far to bail out now. They need to finish it and earn what they can.
The problem they are facing with the A350 is that their development and production costs are too high. It simply costs them too much to develop the plane and produce it in Europe because of the high wages without the efficiency to justify them.
If they canceled the A380, it wouldn't help them with the A350. Instead they would have to figure out how to pay off the billion in loans for the development costs of the A380 with decreasing revenues and no major new products coming out for most of a decade.
Bailing out on the A380 now would bankrupt Airbus if it were a privately held company.
If would also mean laying off huge numbers of worker that are ramping up to build parts for those planes, and wouldn't be needed since the A350 won't be going into production for a very long time.
Losing those jobs, and having to bail out Airbus would put a serious strain on the already stagnant/troubled European economy.
I agree that the 380 should go to allow the 350 to get to market, but, I don't think it will happen.
In addition to the 350 being late to market and no money to fund it, Airbus is looking at the threat of a "plastic" 737 (737P) putting their very popular 320 family out of contention.
Truly the folks at Airbus are "living in interesting times"! LOL