Emirates president Sir Tim Clark has warned US plane manufacturer Boeing that the Dubai-based carrier will not accept any of the ordered 777X aeroplanes unless they are at 100 percent of what was agreed.
Emirates is one of Chicago-based Boeing’s biggest customers, with a fleet of around 140 777-300s. It had previously placed an order believed to be worth over $50 billion for 126 777X and 30 787s.
However, despite delivery initially pencilled in for 2020, Boeing has since delayed that to 2023, although Clark was sceptical that deadline would be met.
Speaking at the opening session of the Arabian Travel Market Virtual event, he said: “There are issues on that aeroplane, and I’m not entirely clear as to when we’re going to get them.”
He added: “We should’ve had the first one delivered in June of last year. It looks as though they’ve said the back end of 2023, but we always read that as 2024. I’ve been with the business too long, when I hear manufacturers say something like that, they can’t give you a figure, they can’t give you a date for a tail number, then you know you’re shifting to the right, very often up to 18 months.”
Deliveries of the wide-body jet, which first flew in January 2020, were held up by Boeing’s shutdown at the height of the coronavirus pandemic, together with a lengthy certification process.
Boeing has also been dogged by the controversy surrounding the safety of the 737 Max aircraft, which only recently returned to the skies after being grounded following two fatal crashes.
Clark, who criticised Boeing for a history over “over-promising” on new aircraft, insisted they would not be accepting anything less than perfect from the new deliveries.
“What I’ve said to Boeing is we will not accept an aeroplane unless it is performing 100 percent to contract, for the same reason they expect us to pay 100 percent to contract at delivery,” he said.
Emirates president Sir Tim Clark
“Unless it is doing what they said it would do, we will not take that aeroplane,” he added.
According to the Boeing website, the 777X will deliver ten percent lower fuel use and emissions and ten percent lower operating costs than the competition. The 777-9 has seating for 426 passengers and a range of over 13,500km.
Clark said: “We have a load of 777-300 ERs that are retiring. We had 171 of them, we’ve only for 146 now because we’ve been letting them go and eventually the 777-9 was going to replace those ERs, but we don’t have any visibility on that for the next three years.”
Meanwhile, Emirates took delivery of its 118th Airbus A380 earlier this month and Clark insisted that the aircraft would remain a “stalwart” of the company’s fleet for the next 10 or 15 years.
He said: “We are working on multiple scenarios depending on the condition of access over time. All of them see the 380s very much playing a large role. It is true that we are setting down three or four of them at the moment as they come to the end of their lease lives etc. but that’s where it ends. We still have five on delivery, one’s coming next month, one in June and three in the back end of this year or next year.”
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