The other shoe has dropped….UPS has announced cancellation of its 10 plane order for the A380.
An excerpt from an AP story:
“Last week’s agreement specified a revised schedule that delayed delivery of the first A380 jumbo freighter to UPS from 2010 to 2012. UPS originally expected its first freighter in 2009.
UPS said it had intended to complete an internal study of whether it could wait until 2012 for the aircraft, but now understands Airbus is diverting employees from the A380 freighter program to work on the passenger version of the plane.
“Based on our previous discussions, we had felt that 2012 was a reasonable estimate of when Airbus could supply this plane,” David Abney, UPS chief operating officer and president of UPS Airline, said in a statement. “We no longer are confident that Airbus can adhere to that schedule.” emphasis added.
UPS has not announced any new orders to replace the A380s.
By: steve rowell - 4th March 2007 at 00:43
I think the writing was on the wall when FED EX cancelled
By: Skymonster - 3rd March 2007 at 21:24
Not particularly bad news for the A380 program at this stage. Aside from freeing up resources, it also frees a few delivery slots to move forward some of the delayed pax A380s.
Interestingly, earlier this week I was talking to a well-placed person in one of the A380’s leading customer airlines, and that airline is very much looking forward to the aeroplane now. The airline is certain it will be a major benefit to them, the problems are now all in the past, and the positives are about to begin. And whilst I don’t want to turn this into an A-vs-B thing, the same person tells me that the 787 program is a bit of a basket case at the moment and its going to take some serious work from Boeing to get it to the customer on promise.
Andy
By: Ren Frew - 3rd March 2007 at 00:30
Ah…. My man was correct after all…:eek:
By: Distiller - 2nd March 2007 at 18:43
Good for Boeing and the 747-8F.
And maybe it’s even good for Airbus, as it frees up engineering capacity for the A350 (and a A300/310 follow-on model that is overdue).
By: adamkendall - 2nd March 2007 at 17:22
It’s totally understandable why UPS has cancelled, any other airline in their situation would do the same.
By: philgatwick05 - 2nd March 2007 at 16:53
This can’t come as too much of a shock.
Maybe if/when the A380F program gets going again we might see a reversal of some of these decisions to cancel :confused:
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March 2, 2007 at 4:45 pm