newstodate.aero
Jan 21, 2013 (newstodate): An Airbus' website has seen the re-emergence of the Airbus A380 in its freighter version.
This has raised speculations that the freighter project may again be taken off the shelf where it has rested since the postponement of the program in March 2007.
Airbus planned the freighter version to be launched alongside the passenger aircraft, but the intials A380 production problems and snags caused the aircraft manufacturer to allocate 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.
With production of the passenger version of the A380 on track and its teething-problems seemingly overcome, Airbus may thus again consider a freighter version, also spurred by the slow progress in the market of the competing Boeing freighter, the Boeing 747-8F.
Also the growing fleet of Airbus A380 aircraft around the world might spur the introduction of the freighter version that would benefit from cross-certification of pilots and component and maintenance commonality.
This has raised speculations that the freighter project may again be taken off the shelf where it has rested since the postponement of the program in March 2007.
Airbus planned the freighter version to be launched alongside the passenger aircraft, but the intials A380 production problems and snags caused the aircraft manufacturer to allocate 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.
With production of the passenger version of the A380 on track and its teething-problems seemingly overcome, Airbus may thus again consider a freighter version, also spurred by the slow progress in the market of the competing Boeing freighter, the Boeing 747-8F.
Also the growing fleet of Airbus A380 aircraft around the world might spur the introduction of the freighter version that would benefit from cross-certification of pilots and component and maintenance commonality.