Airbus plans 900-seat superjumbo
BY ANDREA ROTHMAN AND LAURENCE FROST
Bloomberg News

Airbus SAS plans to build a 900- seat version of its A380 superjumbo. Emirates, the aircraft's biggest customer, said it would buy the new model.

Airbus will begin developing an A380 "stretch" after the standard plane reaches full production in 2010, chief operating officer John Leahy said.

The 525-seat A380 managed to retain its airline customers even after a two-year delay wiped $7 billion from earnings at parent European Aeronautic, Defence & Space Co. Airbus has 191 orders for the plane, including 58 from Emirates. Eight of those were signed this week at the Dubai Air Show.

"I can't discuss it, but there's an awful lot of interest in the A380," Leahy, who is also Airbus's chief salesman, said. "We've got a lot of different discussions going on around the world."

Shares of EADS have gained 3.9 percent this week after Airbus won a slew of contracts at the show that Leahy said will help it to a record annual total. The Toulouse, France- based company announced 297 orders with a list price of $45.4 billion, compared with 155 at Boeing Co., worth $24.3 billion.

Emirates, the biggest Arab airline, was the week's top spender, purchasing 93 planes valued at $23.4 billion. Some of those would have been stretched A380s were that variant already on offer, president Tim Clark said.

"If we had the stretch available today, probably two-thirds of the A380s we've got on order would be for that model," Clark said.

The biggest Arab airline would fit out the plane to carry 750 passengers on a typical flight, Clark said. Routes to countries such as Thailand and Saudi Arabia, destination of the Muslim Hajj pilgrimage, would even support a 1,000-seater plane, though airports might struggle to cope, he said.

The stretched superjumbo, to be designated the A380-900, would be developed once the current edition reaches its maximum build rate of 40 planes a year in 2010, Leahy said. The new jetliner would enter the market around 2015, he said.



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