piedmontf284000 wrote:ben7x wrote:Someone is running out of money I guess…
Yup.
This is more about EK and their finances then airplanes getting to them on time. This is Tim Clark using certification and defects to cover for the fact that as of right now they don't need these airplanes anytime soon (they barely are using the ones they have) and it will put an even bigger hole in their bottom line. Air travel is recovering but not fast enough for a world hub like Dubai. They can't fill their airplanes and the last two years have been very unkind to them.
Tell that to Tim Clark who just paid out 4 week bonuses in January to a large number of operational staff...
In all seriousness, financing for aircraft hasn't been too much of an issue for EK in the past. A lot of financing comes from Islamic banks and wealthy businessmen in the region. Not only are any meaningful payments for these aircraft at least 2 years away, I wouldn't underestimate EK's ability to raise funds in a hurry if they needed to finance them.
JerseyFlyer wrote:The interesting news for me is the possible life extension for 80 of their A380s to 25,000 or 30,000 cycles.
This makes me chuckle. At the beginning of Covid I predicted an ultimate return of between 80-90 A380s and was laughed at for my crazy prediction because everyone else thought only 20-40 would return... Hmm.
accentra wrote:I suspect there might well be something to this. There does seem to be a distinct tactic by both EK and Qatar to look for ways to defer, cancel or get compensation at the OEMs' expense, rather than put their hands up and say they need to negotiate for deferrals, etc, due to the state of their business. Is it face saving? Is it toys out of the pram? Who knows. But all this threatening through the media is pretty poor and is likely to, ultimately, rebound badly on them, as Qatar has just found out (having been binned by Airbus).
There's a lot of public discourse thrown around here that I don't believe necessarily accurately reflects EK's private relationships with both manufacturers.
EK has been very instrumental in the development of the 777X. For at least the past 5 years (but likely even longer than that) they've had a dedicated team of people working with Boeing on a daily basis on various items related to the 777X and its eventual adoption into the fleet. There's a lot of cooperation from both parties in that relationship.
On the Airbus side, EK was very mute about all the technical snags with the A380. The big ones in the public domain being the wing rib issues and the door seal issues which were mentioned by Tim Clark, but never became more than that. EK continually took delivery of A380s during that period and it never soured their relationship.