Emirates’ first Airbus A350 delivery faces further delay until early December

Emirates, the world’s biggest long-haul airline, now expects to take delivery of its first Airbus A350-900 aircraft by the first week of December, after facing several delays this year in the handover of the model.

The aircraft's first commercial flight, to Edinburgh, has been rescheduled for mid-January, Adnan Kazim, deputy president and chief commercial officer of Emirates, told The National on the sidelines of the Arab Air Carriers Organisation meeting in Jordan. The flight will be followed by regional routes including Ahmedabad, Mumbai, Colombo, Muscat, Kuwait and Bahrain.

Emirates expects to receive eight A350s by the end of its financial year, which runs from April 1 to March 31, he added. The initial delays stem from a combination of supply chain issues for parts including seats and the inflight entertainment, as well as technical testing of items onboard the aircraft while on the ground and in the air.

Emirates has 65 Airbus A350-900 planes on order. The first deliveries were supposed to be made in August this year, but were delayed until October and then again until November.

The airline is facing a double whammy of aircraft delays from Boeing and Airbus, as well as a decline in production quality across suppliers that is hampering its expansion plans, Mr Kazim said.

"We don't want to finger-point ... but overall the industry has gone through a major revamp where a lot of skills and knowledge shifted away to other industries when Covid hit," he said. "The industry lost many good-quality people across different areas in the supply chain and the manufacturers. You're talking about 20, 30 years of experience.

"Once you lose them, it takes time to recover and whether that will come back or not is something that raises a big question mark."

The problems with quality have resulted in delays, with Emirates declining to accept products that fail to meet its standards. "We are quite firm in our stand and part of the delays we're going through is to make sure that the aircraft that will fly with us meet that standard and that quality and we don't compromise," Mr Kazim said.

"We could have maybe taken some of these aircraft as is and then work on it, but this is not how Emirates works ... it's not an easy environment to be dealing with. Quality is one component but [production] delays is another component."

This has cost Emirates opportunities for further growth, as it is forced to postpone planned expansion. It is also stuck with a hefty price tag to retrofit its existing aircraft to keep them in the fleet for longer.

For example, the airline should have received 80 of the Boeing 777X wide-body aircraft, but its entry into service has been pushed back until the second half of 2026, Mr Kazim said.

Emirates' legal team is in constant talks with Boeing regarding compensation for the jet delivery delays, but the amount is "a fraction of the impact that it is making by not having the aircraft," he added.

"We cannot predict today any timeline around when [777X] will be delivered, even though the indication is showing the second half of 2026 as a delivery," he said. "But again, it is anyone's guess today in terms of how things will shape up."

Boeing said in October it would postpone plans for the 777X’s entry into service by another year, until 2026, due to certification issues. The model was first scheduled to be delivered in 2020. Emirates has orders for 205 777X, nearly half the model’s total backlog.

"The compensation, we will go for it, but this is not the intention. The intention is to get the aircraft to fly and there are a lot of plans sitting behind it," Mr Kazim said.

The airline, which currently operates to 147 destinations around the world, has an ambitious plan to reach more than 170 by 2030, he said.

"There is demand that's coming in from various pockets of the world, particularly in Asia. We're also seeing growth coming in Africa, the US and these aircraft would have allowed more expansion," Mr Kazim said.

Emirates, which typically announces its first-half yearly annual results in November, has recorded "very strong" demand in the first six months of its fiscal year. Many routes, particularly during the summer, have had load factors exceeding 90 per cent, with demand for premium cabins in first and business class robust, he explained.

So far, Emirates has recovered about 95 per cent of its pre-Covid network size, as it resumes flights to cities including Adelaide and Lagos, and launches new routes to locations such as Bogota, he said.

About 60 per cent of its route network will soon get aircraft featuring the premium economy cabin, reaching 42 destinations by the end of the financial year, from 24 currently. About 63 aircraft will feature the premium economy cabin by the end of March, up from 38 currently, he said.