Emirates chief Tim Clark talks with the media on the airline’s inaugural A380 service from Dubai to New York in August 2008. Credit: Geoffrey Thomas
Which role did the pricing of the A380 play in its fate?
We did some harm to ourselves in 2009 to 2011, when we couldn’t get follow-on orders for the airplane, by not keeping our pricing aggressive, but by having a big step up in pricing and expecting everybody will just pay. But they didn’t pay. I walked away from a deal with Lufthansa that we should have won for another five or six airplanes, because we didn’t meet their pricing, which actually was higher than their launch customer pricing. Airbus’s finance department just overplayed their hand and thought: These airlines just have to pay. No, they don’t, they just have to find some other aircraft to fly.
Why did the A380 never tap some important markets?
We never broke into China. There was enormous political pressure blocking us from getting into China, which was a big shame. The Germans, Brits, and French should have gotten together and put their own political pressure back on China. The fact was that the US and Boeing were doing everything they could to make sure that A380s didn’t get into China. The five A380s for China Southern was our one little flag in there. They did whatever they could to put pressure on the Chinese government to not take any more aircraft, that was unfortunate, too. We could have easily picked up another 50 or a hundred airplanes out of China. That would have really built up the base for the A380. Also, Japan has always been extremely close to Boeing, becoming risk-sharing partners on the 787 and for other components.