Emirates, the largest customer for Airbus' A380, said Thursday that the superjumbo aircraft is still overweight, adding to operating costs, and that it will seek compensation from the European plane maker.
"It will be 6 tons overweight from its original specifications," Tim Clark, president of Emirates, said in an interview.
"This is obviously going to mean more fuel burn.
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Emirates has 45 of the A380s on order and will take delivery of the first plane next year, 21 months behind schedule, because of manufacturing delays at Airbus. The Toulouse, France-based plane maker lost money last year for the first time because of the delays and expects to report a loss this year, too.
"It will be an amount that is not insignificant," Clark said of the higher A380 operating costs.
"Airbus will come to the table on this. It will be negotiated."
A spokeswoman for Airbus countered that the plane is meeting performance guarantees even if its maximum takeoff weight is 1 percent over the specification, which was set at 569 metric tons.
"Nothing has changed with regard to the weight of the A380 for the past three years," spokeswoman Barbara Kracht said in a phone interview from Airbus headquarters. "Flight test results have demonstrated we are meeting the guaranteed performance."
The priority for A380 customers should be delivery of the aircraft more than compensation for earlier delays, Clark said.
"Get the damn thing out, get people flying in it," he said.
There is a "convergence" between Airbus and Emirates on the compensation issue, so timing is not a significant concern, Clark said.
"We're not going to go bankrupt because we don't have the penalties," he said.
"It will end up in a resolution to the satisfaction of all of us.
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