Airbus plays down extra costs for A380
Wed Dec 22, 2004 02:10 AM ET
PARIS, Dec 22 (Reuters) - The extra costs to develop Airbus's A380 superjumbo may not turn out to be as serious as initial figures have suggested, the program's chief engineer Charles Champion was quoted as saying in the Wall Street Journal newspaper on Wednesday.
Airbus parent company EADS said this month the cost to develop the double-decker, seen as the successor to U.S. rival Boeing's 747 jumbo, could be as much as 1.45 billion euros ($1.94 billion) higher than budgeted.
"The money is not spent. We are not bleeding money," Champion said in the newspaper. He added the 1.45 billion figure was the worst-case scenario of possible additional spending over the next 9 years and that he had begun efforts to avoid as much of this cost as possible.
EADS's incoming co-head Noel Forgeard has said the company sees margins at planemaking unit Airbus broadly intact despite higher costs that could come on top of the A380's $10.7 billion development programme.
The double-decker 555-seat A380 is due to be delivered in the first half of 2006 and Singapore Airlines is set to become the plane's first user.