Emirates still working on huge widebody order

Emirates has yet to finalize a future aircraft order for potentially 100 to 150 widebodies. The new aircraft will be for growth and the replacement of eventually 249 Airbus A380s and Boeing 777s. More Airbus A350s and Boeing 787s are the obvious solution. Emirates President Sir Tim Clark discussed the order and many other topics during a media roundtable on the sidelines of the last day of the IATA AGM in Istanbul. Emirates still working on huge widebody order. “All I would say is that we are looking at buying more aircraft. (..) We are looking at buying more A350s, 777-9s, and possibly the 787 range. We are doing that because, after having extended the life of the 777-300ERs and the A380s with the cabin refurbishment, this will see us through the life of the A380. We will start to take those aircraft out probably in 2032-2033, but they will stay with us until the back end of the next decade. After that, it is anybody’s guess. By that time, I might have retired,” Clark joked. On the same topic, he said later: “These older aircraft have finite lives, so we need to replace them in the timescale we will choose, not what the manufacturers will tell us what we should do. So we are looking at plans that take us through the thirties. If you look at the number of aircraft, you get some kind of measure of what we need to do, above what we already have. So we have the 777-9s coming in, we have the A350 order, so we need more. We had 116 A380s, plus all the 777s.” “Then we have a lot of expansion plans driving the fleet for all parts of the world. The A350 gives us an amazing capability to open the kind of routes that are too small for the -300ER and the 777-9. As we grow the airline, and don’t forget we have flydubai bolted on as well, the combined network of the two carriers by the end of this decade will include probably 250 cities. I am not prepared to say at this stage how many aircraft we will order. It could be 100, 150, it could be eighty, it could be anything else. But it doesn’t stop there: you have to replace, you have to expand.” Remember that at the 2019 Dubai Airshow Emirates revised the original 777X order and swapped some for thirty 787-9s, and ordered fifty A350s that same week. The 787-9 order meant that a 20127 order for forty 787-10s was canceled, but the longest version of the Dreamliner seems to be back on the table in Dubai again. Current order book The current order book includes 115 Boeing 777X, thirty Boeing 787-9s, and fifty A350-900s. “The first 777-9 will not come to us until probably the back half of 2025, fingers crossed. The first of the A350s will arrive in July/August next year. There is a stream of fifty being delivered over a 2.5-year period,” Clark said. The A350s will open up new markets in Africa, the Americas, and Asia. Included in the 115 777X’ on firm order are 35 777-8s, which Emirates ordered as part of the launch order of the 777X at the 2013 Dubai Airshow. Clark still wants the -8, although Boeing yet has to officially launch the passenger version and launched the -8F freighter first. Much to the annoyance of Clark: “We are still very interested in the -8. They are in the contract and should have been delivered next year. I am a little bit irritated that Boeing launched the freighter first without having contact with us. It would have been nice if they would have asked us first before they did that, I made that point very clear. We have a contract. The 777-8 in the way they have modified it makes it a very, very good aircraft. We will still reserve our position and will be in our mix.” Updated 777-9 cabin Clark remains frustrated that the 777-9 is so late and behind schedule by some four years, but he is a bit more confident that the latest schedule with a 2025 delivery will stick. There are still some technical issues with the General Electric GE9X, but the engine maker is working “flat out” to sort them out before the aircraft enters service in the last quarter of 2025. Almost ten years after signing the order, Emirates is still waiting for the first Boeing 777-9 (Boeing) By then, the Emirates 777-9 will have an updated cabin. “I personally was involved with the cabin design in 2017, but with all the delays and how technology has moved on, we redesigned it last year,” said Clark. Emirates is also working on a further upgrade of First and Business Class. “I am not going to say how, but there are changes coming. We will raise the bar again. We still have some learnings to do.” He referred to the optimum format of the fully-enclosed suites with doors and the cabin arrangement. Clark prefers a 1-1-1 arrangement, but it needs to fit the aircraft. For the A350s, the First Class suites are too big, so they will come without them. A380 future On the current fleet status, Clark said that sixteen to twenty A380s are still on the ground, but Emirates intends to bring back 90 to 95 of them into service by summer 2024. Six A30s have received cabin upgrades with Premium Economy and other updates. Conversion work has come down to 21 days per aircraft. Together with wing spar repairs, Maintenance and Engineering facilities in Dubai are fully occupied, with even space in the paint shop required for some work. This will slow down the introduction of the new Emirates livery a little bit. Additional wing repairs are done at Airbus in Toulouse and in Manila at Lufthansa Technik. Emirates reported its highest-ever profit for FY2022-2023. In the first two months of the new financial year, results exceed those of last year.

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