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Emirates declares no orders for A350 or B787 planes in 2017
September 15th 2017
Dubai’s Emirates Airline has confirmed that it will not order any A350s or B787s this year. Read More » Speaking to media at the London Aviation Festival, Emirates president, Sir Tim Clark, said those plans “were off the table for now”.
Also quizzed about a speculated top-up order for the upgraded A380plus, Clark said: “I know they [Airbus] would like us to do something. At the moment, we are not at that state of readiness. We need copper-bottomed undertakings that they would do everything they needed to do to keep the programme going. We don’t want to be left with aircraft that have no value,” he told Bloomberg.
Another option for Emirates would be to renew the 12-year contracts on its 39 leased A380s, which would allow the airline to operate the aircraft at zero depreciation. The airline took delivery of its 56th owned A380 in August, which raised its A380 fleet to 95. The Dubai airline has 47 more of the type on order.
Speaking to Skift in London, Clark said the airline was considering the inclusion of a “budget economy” section in its aircraft to tap the budget-conscious traveller. “The fact of the matter is there is a whole stream of new market segments coming in that are budget conscious,” Clark said. “I think we can adapt what we do to accommodate not all of it, but some of it.”
Perhaps, Clark said, Emirates would have tiers like “economy plus,” “normal economy” and “budget economy”.
