Thai Airways International has been speaking to Airbus about delaying further the delivery of its Airbus A380s and is also hoping to persuade the aircraft-maker to let it delay making some of the payments on A330-300s that are due for delivery this year.
The Star Alliance carrier's VP of investor relations, Raj Tanta-nanta, says Thai and Airbus are talking about delaying delivery of the first A380 to early 2011.
Thai announced in February 2007 that it had reached agreement with Airbus to delay "by approximately 21 months" the delivery of its A380s. This meant the first delivery was pushed back to around September 2010.
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Raj also says the airline wants to delay making pre-payments on the A380s and Airbus is likely to agree. This is because Airbus might have its own reasons for wanting to delay delivery of A380s to Thai, he adds.
Raj also says Thai is seeking to delay payments due on A330-300s scheduled for delivery this year. The airline has eight on order and six are due this year.
He says Thai is unable to delay the deliveries because the aircraft are already being built. He says the airline has made pre-payments on two of the aircraft but is speaking to Airbus to see if it can delay the pre-payments on the others.
Thai is trying to conserve cash and is scaling back capacity. The airline next month will be announcing a loss for the fourth quarter of last year and is currently seeking a 20-30 billion baht ($572-858 million) bridging loan from the Thai Government.
Thai blames the global economic downturn and the temporary closure late last year of Bangkok's two airports for its financial woes.
Source: Air Transport Intelligence news
