Paul Lewis/WASHINGTON DC
Airbus Industrie is targeting October 2005 for first production delivery of the A3XX-100 if it can muster sufficient market support by mid-year for the consortium's supervisory board to commit to a simultaneous launch offer of passenger and cargo variants of the ultra-large aircraft.
The October delivery target is another programme slip. Until recently, Airbus had aimed for an in-service date of mid-2005. "We're in talks with airlines about whether they are ready to receive offers. You will see us go to the supervisory board at the end of the first half of the year to seek authorisation to offer," says Airbus senior vice-president John Leahy.
Leahy considers half of the 20 airlines on the A3XX airline advisory board to be serious potential launch customers and describes as "posturing" recent negative comments made by the three largest European members, Air France, British Airways and Lufthansa. "I have not written off any of these three being customers-maybe they won't be the first," he adds.
Increasing attention is turning to freighter operators and, in particular, Atlas Air, Cargolux, FedEx, Singapore Airlines Cargo and Lufthansa Cargo. Airbus wants to launch the A3XX-100 freighter at the same time as the 555-seat passenger version, but it will not enter service before 2007.
"FedEx has told us that, if we were to commit to building a freighter, it would want to be a launch customer," claims Leahy, while Atlas says it "also wants a freighter sooner rather than later."
Boeing similarly is understood to be strongly pushing a 473.5 million kilogramme (1.04 million pound) gross-weight freighter variant of its 747-400X.
The basic configuration of the A3XX was frozen in January last year, but Airbus continues to tweak the design, making more than 50 aerodynamic changes. The consortium plans to complete final definition by the end of next year, with first flight around mid-2004.
Airbus is budgeting $12 billion to develop four versions of the aircraft, of which it claims to have spent $600 million already. Aside from the initial A3XX-100 and -100F versions, it plans a 656-seat -200 stretch and either a 480-seat -50 shrink or longer, 16,200km (8,750nm) range -100R.
• Rolls-Royce, meanwhile, has been asked to submit a Trent 500 engine proposal to power the 200-250-seat A330-100 under study. The move is representative of a shift away from the nine-frame shrink of the Trent 700-powered A330-200 towards Airbus' original study of an upgrade based around the A300-600R.
"What I'm looking for is fly-by-wire, a common cockpit, new interior, the capacity of the A300-600R and maybe 500nm more range," says Leahy. "I want to clean up the wing, get 5% better fuel efficiency and keep the capital cost similar to that of the A300-600R."
Source: Flight International
