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Interview with Tim Clark (Part 2)

18 May 2015 by Clement Huang

Emirates continues to maintain faith in the A380, despite persistent reports that manufacturer Airbus is facing difficulty attracting new customers for the superjumbo.

In an interview with sister publication Business Traveller Middle East, the airline’s chief executive Tim Clark highlighted London Heathrow as a perfect example where the A380 would flourish.

With ongoing complications surrounding approval of a third runway (which International Airlines Group chief Willie Walsh dubbed a “lost cause” in an interview with The Guardian) the 500-seater A380 would be the ideal aircraft to help airlines meet demand with limited slots available.

“The seat factors on our A380s are 82.5 per cent,” said Clark. “It’s almost double the profitability per seat km than the other fleet. It’s such a good plane, but of course you’ve got to fill it.”

Emirates has long been a firm advocate of developing an upgraded A380 (see here), and Clark highlighted the reasons for this.

“We’re very interested in an upgrade of the A380 - it would be much cheaper to run, environmentally friendly, less fuel burn and would give us a 10-13 per cent reduction in operating cost,” said Clark.

“But Airbus has to get past the first hurdle and convince people to buy it in the first place.”

Clark also revealed that the airline will be replacing all of its existing B777s with the next-generation B777-8X and B777-9X, and highlighted the role of the new aircraft.

“Of the two variants the 9X is much bigger, that will be able to do 14-15 hour missions. The 8X is the real sweetheart as it will fly to the other side of the planet with a good payload.”

Finally, it appears that the A350, which Emirates surprisingly cancelled its entire order for last June (see here), is back on the table. Having seen the successful launch of the aircraft, Clark now believes that Emirates will be comparing the A350 with the B787, when making a decision about which aircraft to place an order for. 

“Let’s start again. Boeing produces the B787-10 and we were interested in that. Now that it’s on the market, we’re looking at the B787-10 against the A350-900 to see which will do the job for us.  How many we will buy and when, we’ll let you know.”

For more information, visit emirates.com

Dominic Ellis, Clement Huang

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