KUALA LUMPUR: Airbus Group SE is not giving up on its super-jumbo aircraft programme amid airlines’ fading interest in jumbo jets, expecting demand for its double-decker A380 to rebound by 2020.
Airbus president of commercial aircraft Fabrice Bregier said as international traffic grows over the next few years, certain airports in the US and Europe would prefer to accommodate larger aircraft due to limited slot allocation.
“Keep in mind that this market will double in size in the world, maybe in 15 years, and in Asia, in less than 10 years. After that, perhaps not in Kuala Lumpur because you have superb infrastructure, but if you want to fly to the US or Europe, with the congestion of the airport and slot allocation and if you don’t use bigger aircraft, you will lose your market share,” he told a media round table yesterday.
“So the trend is towards bigger aircraft, and you will see, I’m sure, a second wave of A380 [procurement] when we reach this congestion,” he added.
Bregier pointed to China — which is seeing international traffic grow by about 11% annually — as a potential market for its super-jumbo jets.
He also cited rival Boeing’s 747 jumbo jet programme when it first began in 1969.
“At the beginning of the [Boeing] 747 [programme], it was a failure [because] there was no market [before it found significant success later].
“So I don’t say we would repeat the success of the 747, it is just that right now we have decided to decrease our production of A380 to one a month, about 12 aircraft a year [by 2018]. We expect after 2020 it would be in the position to go up again,” he said.
According to Bloomberg, Airbus last July announced that it was looking to cut its A380 production by 2018 as the demand for A380s had fallen far short of original projections. Airbus delivered 28 A380s during 2016, up from 27 a year earlier.
Bregier believes there is still huge potential in the A380s, particularly for routes such as the haj and umrah pilgrimage.
Malaysia Airlines Bhd, which has six A380s in its fleet, currently uses the aircraft to serve the Kuala Lumpur-London route. It is in the midst of hiving off all six of them to a new airline that caters specifically for haj and umrah purposes, by reconfiguring them to a 700-seater jet, from the current 494 seats.
As for the Kuala Lumpur-London route, Malaysia Airlines will be leasing six new A350-900s from Air Lease Corp as replacements for the A380s, with deliveries planned between the fourth quarter of this year through the first half of 2018.
However, Bregier said, there will be a delay in the delivery of the first two A350-900s, although he ensures that it is only a matter of “a few weeks” and that delivery is still slated within this year.
“We expect a few weeks of delay compare with the initial date because the cabin alignment came a bit late in the beginning of the production of the A350s. But our customers are well aware of that,” he said.
Going forward, Bregier said Airbus will continue to expand its footprint in Malaysia, expecting procurement of aircraft components from the country to increase by 25% to US$500 million by 2021 from US$400 million (RM1.78 billion) per year currently.
The increase, he said, will come on the back of higher production rates for the aircraft types worked on by suppliers such as CTRM Aero Composites Sdn Bhd, Spirit AeroSystems (M) Sdn Bhd and Celestica, and a growth in the footprint of local joint ventures including maintenance, repair and overhaul firm Sepang Aircraft Engineering Sdn Bhd.
“Airbus has established itself as Malaysia’s largest foreign partner in the strategic aerospace sector. We are committed to growing our presence in the coming years. This is a recognition of the high quality of work undertaken by Malaysian companies and workers, the country’s competitive cost base and its expertise in the aerospace engineering sector,” Bregier said.