Airbus is faced with a difficult question. The A380 has (so far) failed to sell at rate that will even begin to make it a profitable aircraft for the manufacturer. In fact, in addition to the ~15 - 20 billion Euro that it cost to put it into production, Airbus has pretty much admitted that it's been costing more to build each aircraft than the actual sales price (BTW this isn't exactly uncommon for early production aircraft, but not so much 7 years after EIS
).
The A380 is supposed to turn the corner in 2015 and become cash flow positive, but that'll make only a small dent in the 15-20 billion Euro development costs (plus interest). Bottom line is that unless Airbus can sell hundreds more A380s, it'll never get within shouting distance of break-even. Worse, to really make any money the production rate needs to stay no lower than the current ~3/month, preferably higher. If the production rate drops much below the current rate the overhead for maintaining the line becomes killer and cash flow again goes negative.
We have the biggest customer saying they'll order a bunch more, but
only if Airbus invests more billions in a new engine (and perhaps a stretch, which would mean even more billions). At least so far, no operator besides Emirates has expressed serious interest in an upgraded A380.
Airbus is now a publicly traded company - less answerable to governments and more answerable to the shareholders. Throwing away billions on a dead end program is not a realistic option (at least not intentionally). So Airbus needs to decide if dumping additional billions into the A380 is the answer to making the program a long term success, or good money after tens of billions of bad. Not a decision I'd want to have to make
In short, AB needs to decide if they believe all their
PR about the A380 being a future success