Thursday, May 6, 2010

Airbus A380 Order Dearth Risks Double-Decker-Dud Fate

May 5 (Bloomberg) -- Five years after its first test flight, the Airbus SAS A380 superjumbo remains more than 200 planes short of making the program profitable.
Only one new airline customer signed up for the 525-seat jet since commercial operations began in 2007. Deliveries slowed to 10 A380s in 2009, from 12 a year earlier, as Airbus struggled to ramp up production of the world’s largest passenger plane.
The muted response for the Airbus flagship, with just......