Free Republic

Airbus says the U.S. government has granted it a license allowing it to sell the first 17 planes involved in a landmark deal with Iran. […] Earlier this year, Iran Air signed agreements to buy 118 planes from the European consortium Airbus, estimated to be worth some €22.8 billion ($25 billion). …

Iran plans to buy 114 civil aircraft from European aircraft maker Airbus, the transport minister was quoted as saying on Saturday, ahead of the anticipated lifting of international sanctions on Iran. "We have taken the first step in agreeing with Airbus to buy 114 planes," Abbas Akhoondi was quoted as saying by the Tasnim news agency. Airbus said it was not engaging in commercial talks with Iran until sanctions had been lifted. ...

...The A380 might have built more momentum if not for production debacles. Around the time of the first test flight in 2005, Airbus realized it had underestimated the complexity of wiring the superjumbo. Managers discovered that French and German designers had used incompatible software. ...More setbacks followed. The engine of an A380 blew up during a passenger flight in 2010. Nobody was hurt, but it drew negative attention to the plane. Wing cracks discovered on many A380s led to costly repairs. Customers, including Richard Branson’s Virgin Atlantic Airways Ltd., Air France-KLM SA and Qantas Airways Ltd. , canceled orders. The...

The European plane maker said Thursday that it will stop delivering A380s in 2021 after Dubai-based airline Emirates slashed its orders for the huge jetliner. The A380, the world's largest airliner, first took to the skies 14 years ago. But Airbus' giant bet that airlines would need lots of extra-big planes to fly passengers between major airport hubs didn't pay off as the company had hoped. The company has delivered 234 of the superjumbos to date, less than a quarter of the 1,200 it predicted it would sell when it first introduced the double-decker aircraft.

Out of Time Airbus CEO Tom Enders expressed regrets over the timing of the A380 program, saying, “There has been speculation that we were 10 years too early; I think it is clear that we were 10 years too late.” But it was closer to four decades too late, or perhaps three decades too soon. There was not enough demand for an aircraft that size by the time the A380 rolled out in 2005, as proven by the aircraft's inability to attract sizeable orders in its brief lifetime. The 747 has lasted five decades and still maintains a sizable share...

Production on the Airbus A380 superjumbo jet will end, and deliveries will stop in 2021 after Airbus (EADSY) renegotiated an order with Emirates, the largest A380 customer. ...The Airbus A380 entered commercial service just 11 years ago and can only be accommodated at about a dozen airports worldwide due to its size. ...Meanwhile, the Boeing 747 looks to live on, even as demand from carriers also shrinks.

France Reveals Airbus A380 Sale To China January 21, 2005 Airbus will next week announce the sale of five A380 superjumbo planes to China Southern, the French transport ministry said on Friday. The deal between Airbus, China Southern and Chinese aviation supplies organization CASC will be signed on January 28. The news was disclosed, apparently accidentally, in a weekly diary released by the office of Transport Minister Gilles de Robien, including a reference to the planned signing ceremony. Industry officials confirmed the deal with China Southern, which brings the number of orders or commitments for the world's largest civil plane...

PARIS (Reuters) - Airbus is drawing up contingency plans to phase out production of the world’s largest jetliner, the A380 superjumbo, if it fails to win a key order from Dubai’s Emirates, three people familiar with the matter said. The moment of truth for the slow-selling airliner looms after just 10 years in service and leaves one of Europe’s most visible international symbols hanging by a thread, despite a major airline investment in new cabins unveiled this month. “If there is no Emirates deal, Airbus will start the process of ending A380 production,” a person briefed on the plans said....

Airlines, it turns out, prefer the fuel efficiency of smaller planes like the Boeing 777 to the pack-em-in capacity of the Airbus A380. As a result, Airbus hasn’t scored any new orders for an A380 in more than a year. Its big plan to turn things around? Launch a new version, make it cheaper to fly, and slap on some winglets. This week at the Paris Air Show, Airbus announced the revamped “A380plus,” a refresh that packs even more passengers into the super-jumbo and tweaks the wing design. The upswept winglets found on most modern airliners boost fuel efficiency by...

Here at the world's busiest airport -- with seven concourses and more than 200 gates -- a gate for the Super Jumbo Airbus A380 could not be provided. That forced Qatar Airways passengers to deplane Wednesday via mobile stairs and shuttle buses. Atlanta's airport has only one gate that can accommodate the A380 -- the world's largest airliner. The airport and resident hub carrier Delta Air Lines said they could not make that gate available. The very public battle between Delta Air Lines, the world's second largest airline, and competitor Qatar Airways represents a microcosm of the national debate over...

PARIS: Iran agreed on Thursday to buy 118 Airbus jets worth $27 billion at list prices, including a dozen A380 superjumbos, after international sanctions were lifted against Tehran this month. The planemaker said the deal, signed amid a raft of others during a visit by President Hassan Rouhani, was conditional on getting US export licences because more than 10 per cent of Airbus jetliner parts come from the United States. The order for 73 wide-body and 45 narrow-body jets allows Airbus to steal a march on US rival Boeing as Iran seeks to renovate and expand its worn-out fleet of...

Tom Enders stared at the phone on his desk as it began to ring. The Airbus boss had been expecting a call to his office in Toulouse. It was Tim Clark, chief executive of Dubai-based airline Emirates, the biggest buyer of the planemaker’s A380 “superjumbo”. Clark was angry. He wanted to know why Airbus finance director Harald Wilhelm had just raised the prospect of the death of the A380. The aircraft cost $25 billion (£16 billion) to develop, but it has struggled to chalk up the large orders Airbus had envisioned, at $440 million each. So far, it has just...

The pilot who saved the lives of hundreds on a crippled jet should have felt elated but, as he tells Jennifer Sexton, he descended into grief and self-doubt in the months that followed Richard Champion de Crespigny was about to turn off the Airbus's seatbelt sign on the climb out of Singapore when engine two on QF32 blew up like a cluster bomb. In his hands were the lives of 469 Sydney-bound passengers and crew. The former RAAF pilot of 35 years' experience then captained a four-hour nightmare on board a catastrophically damaged Qantas plane. The 55-year-old not only brought...

Airbus said on Thursday it had discovered more cracks in the wings of A380 superjumbo aircraft but insisted the world's largest jetliner remained safe to fly. The announcement comes two weeks after tiny cracks were first reported in the wings of the 525-seat, double-decker aircraft, which entered service just over four years ago. Airbus said it was in talks with the European safety agency, EASA. "Additional cracks have been found and we are working closely on this issue with EASA," an Airbus spokesman said. "They do not affect safe operation of the aircraft.

Australian aircraft engineers have called for Airbus A380 - the world's biggest passenger aircraft - to be grounded, after Singapore Airlines and Qantas found cracks in the wings of their super-jumbos. 'We can't continue to gamble with people's lives and allow those aircraft to fly around and hope that they make it until their four-yearly inspection,' said Steve Purvinas, secretary of the Australian Licensed Aircraft Engineers Association.

Yikes!

<p>FEARS of jet fuel gushing from ruptured tanks gripped the pilots of the crippled Qantas A380 superjumbo after the emergency landing in Singapore last month.</p> <p>In the first account by a member of the flight crew, senior Qantas check-captain David Evans reveals the most dangerous period during the three-hour drama was during the 50 minutes it took to offload the 469 passengers and crew, reported the Herald Sun.</p>

THE crew of a crippled Qantas airliner averted disaster last month. As the crew of Flight QF32 began to reconfigure the damaged A380 aircraft for landing in Singapore, they were bringing in the superjumbo without many of the systems they took for granted and with only one engine functioning normally. Only the No 3 engine had reverse thrust, no leading edge slats were available, there was limited aileron and spoiler control and anti-skid braking was restricted, an Australian Transport Safety Bureau report said yesterday. The nose wheel steering was limited and the pilots knew the nose was likely to pitch...

NEW details have emerged revealing just how close Qantas flight QF32 came to disaster earlier this month. Turbine fragments flew out of the plane’s engine when it exploded in mid-air, severing cables in the wing, narrowly missing the fuel tank and taking out flight control systems during the November 4 incident, according to a preliminary report by Airbus. The pilots were forced to deal with an "unprecedented" number of issues during the two-hour ordeal, Vice President of the Australian and International Pilots Association, Richard Woodward, said. “The amount of failures is unprecedented,'' Mr Woodward, a Qantas A380 pilot who has...

Rolls Outlines Trent 900 Modification Plan By Max Kingsley-Jones kingsley.jones@aviationweek.com LONDON Rolls-Royce says that last week’s uncontained failure of a Trent 900 on a Qantas Airbus A380 was caused by the malfunction of “a specific component” in the turbine area, which will be addressed by a modification programme across the fleet. Meanwhile Airbus boss Tom Enders has warned that the problem may impact A380 deliveries this year and next. Rolls says that the investigation and Trent 900 engine inspections launched in the wake of the QF32 incident on Nov. 4 has led it to draw two key conclusions. It confirms...