newstodate.aero
Feb 03, 2011 (newstodate): What became of the freighter version of the Airbus A380?
-The Airbus A380F jumbo-freighter program, now suspended, will be reactivated again later, said Airbus in 2007, indicating that a relaunch might be attempted in 2015 and seeing a market for some 400 A380F over the next 20 years.
And the vision remains: - The A380F is not scrapped, it is still in the family plan. We focus on the stable ramp up of production of the passenger A380-800 first, then the A380-900, and next the freighter, says an Airbus spokesperson.
So far, Airbus has only landed orders for the A380-800 version, leaving some way to go before the freighter version may be reconsidered.
Airbus planned the freighter version to be launched alongside the passenger aircraft, but the A380 production problems and snags caused the aircraft manufacturer to relocate the A380F engineering team to the passenger A380 project instead.
By 2006, Airbus had firm orders for a total of 27 A380F aircraft including 10 for FedEx, two for Emirates SkyCargo, five for IFLC, and 10 for UPS, besides a number of options.
But in March 2007, UPS as the last remaining customer canceled its order for the Airbus A380 freighter, leaving Airbus' A380F order book empty.
The Airbus A380F would offer the capacity of lifting 150 tonnes of cargo over a range of 10,400 km at the lowest unit cost of any freighter.
-The Airbus A380F jumbo-freighter program, now suspended, will be reactivated again later, said Airbus in 2007, indicating that a relaunch might be attempted in 2015 and seeing a market for some 400 A380F over the next 20 years.
And the vision remains: - The A380F is not scrapped, it is still in the family plan. We focus on the stable ramp up of production of the passenger A380-800 first, then the A380-900, and next the freighter, says an Airbus spokesperson.
So far, Airbus has only landed orders for the A380-800 version, leaving some way to go before the freighter version may be reconsidered.
Airbus planned the freighter version to be launched alongside the passenger aircraft, but the A380 production problems and snags caused the aircraft manufacturer to relocate the A380F engineering team to the passenger A380 project instead.
By 2006, Airbus had firm orders for a total of 27 A380F aircraft including 10 for FedEx, two for Emirates SkyCargo, five for IFLC, and 10 for UPS, besides a number of options.
But in March 2007, UPS as the last remaining customer canceled its order for the Airbus A380 freighter, leaving Airbus' A380F order book empty.
The Airbus A380F would offer the capacity of lifting 150 tonnes of cargo over a range of 10,400 km at the lowest unit cost of any freighter.