Emirates Wants to Buy 40 More Airbus A380s

Emirates Airline Airbus A380 (image: Emirates)

While the rest of the world struggles to stay afloat in a difficult world economy, Dubai-based Emirates Airline is hardly tightening he belt…

Confirming growing demand for the world’s largest airliner, a top executive of Emirates Airline said on Thursday the company would be willing to buy another 40 Airbus A380 jets, but that the fast-growing Dubai airport where the airline is based is short of room for them.

Emirates Airline President Tim Clark had already said the airline wants another 30 A380s, on top of 90 already on order. Increasing that number to 40 suggests demand is rising for the A380 made by the Airbus unit of Europe’s EADS. Emirates, by far the largest customer for the A380, whose list price is $390 million, had 23 of the superjumbo jets in service at the end of August.

Emirates, one of Dubai’s most prized assets, has continued to grow rapidly despite a regional debt crisis followed by a wider recession affecting the airline industry and high fuel prices.

“We don’t cancel orders,” Clark said. “We get on with it.”

If Emirates carried out its ambition of operating a fleet of 130 A380s, adding 40 to its current order of 90, it would control a fleet worth over $50 billion at list prices and extend its dominance as the European planemaker’ s largest customer.

Emirates is also keen to update its Boeing 777 fleet as it will start retiring its current fleet of 777-300ERs in 2017. Boeing is still working on the new updated variant.

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