Emirates Airline is canceling orders and options for 20 Airbus A340 aircraft and would send a team to the manufacturer’s headquarters in France to check the promised delivery dates for an order for the A380 superjumbo, an airline spokeswoman said Monday.
“Emirates confirms it will not be taking delivery of its order and option for 20 Airbus A340-600 aircraft,” an Emirates spokeswoman said.
The spokeswoman, who asked not to be identified further because she was not authorized to speak to the media, said the company was “sending a team of technicians from its engineering department in mid-November to Toulouse in order to assess if the revised timings we have been given for the delayed delivery of our A380s are achievable.”
Earlier this month, Emirates Airline said it was “reviewing all its options” after a further 10-month delay on delivery of its order of 45 Airbus A380 jumbo jets. Emirates described the delay as “very serious.”
The 10-month delay on the superjumbos followed earlier announcements of delays totaling one year. Airbus announced a six-month delay early in 2005, and a second similar delay in June this year.
With the order of 45 Airbus A380s, Emirates is Airbus’s largest customer for the 555-seat double-deck aircraft, in a deal worth a total of roughly $13.5 billion.