Emirates president Tim Clark has run out of patience with the failure of aircraft and powerplant manufacturers to deliver service-ready hardware from day one.
The outspoken airline chief has put contract negotiations with Airbus and Boeing on hold as he waits for issues to be addressed around GE Aviation and Rolls-Royce powerplants which have afflicted the Boeing 777X and 787. He also expressed his concerns about the Rolls-Royce Trent 7000 and XWB which respectively power the Airbus A330neo and A350. Clark says that the airframe and engine manufacturers have a poor track record in being able to deliver aircraft that work as they should from service-entry and is tired of the need for airlines and OEMs to “work together” to tackle the problems. “I’m a little bit irritated that over the years we as an airline, and the industry, have been subjected to the requirements of the propulsion manufacturers, and to an extent the airframe manufacturers, where we are expected to deal with quality-control issues, design issues etc, and operate these aircraft and engines and take whatever consequences there are when they don’t work.” Clark says that airlines need “99.5%” dispatch reliability: “We are not in a business to deal with aircraft that don’t function properly. The reason we buy new aircraft is to get five to six years of hassle-free operations on a technical basis.”

Source: FlightGlobal

Troubled French leisure carrier Aigle Azur is to start suspending scheduled services as it seeks investors. The decision follows the carrier's being placed in receivership on 2 September. Aigle Azure says it has "entered a period of active searching for buyers" and that it has "no choice" but to begin cutting back flights. It is halting its scheduled operations to destinations in Mali, Brazil and Portugal from 5 September. The airline serves cities including Bamako and Sao Paulo.
The airline adds that sales for flights from 10 September are also suspended. "[We] wish to offer our sincere apologies to all [our] passengers and partners in this exceptional situation," it states.

Source: FlightGlobal

Emirates is implementing its Airbus A380 retirement plan which will see its fleet size peak shortly before declining to around 90-100 aircraft by the mid-2020s. The airline, which took delivery of its first A380 in 2008, is to cut its orders for the type from 162 to 123 in the wake of Airbus’s decision to axe the programme in 2020. Cirium fleet data shows that the current fleet stands at 112 aircraft. “You’ll start seeing A380s coming out of our fleet for various reasons, and we’ve always said this,” says Emirates Airline president Tim Clark. “These are being dealt with on a tail-by-tail, month-by-month basis under a retirement [schedule] that is well planned already.” “We are in the process of [starting A380 retirements]. Two have been deactivated. They are under retirement because we’ve got a major overhaul coming up and it’s best to take the old aircraft out – they’re all written down – and take the gear off them rather than buy a $25 million main landing gear. I need two, possibly three, to meet that [overhaul] requirement.” “Clearly, the demand in the secondhand market isn’t there. So when we’ve got the life out of the aircraft that we had planned – in fact we’re extending them by a couple of years – we’re indifferent to what happens to them in the sense that we don’t have any value left in them and we don’t have to take any write-downs."

Source: FlightGlobal