Breaking: Emirates Orders Airbus A350

Emirates has provided a boost to Airbus on day four of the Dubai Airshow, with a firm order for another 15 A350-900s. The airline had been rumored to be in discussion with Airbus all week, but the lack of -1000s in the order speaks volumes to the President’s opinion of the Rolls-Royce Trent engines, which Sir Tim Clark described previously as being ‘defective.’

Details of the order

Emirates has signed an order for 15 additional A350-900s at the Dubai Airshow. This takes its total backlog for the type to 65 aircraft. No signing ceremony was held, and while the order is another notch on the scoreboard for Airbus, it’s perhaps not all the order that the European planemaker was hoping for.

In a statement to the press, HH Sheikh Ahmed bin Saeed Al Maktoum, CEO of the airline, said,

“The A350-900s will add to our fleet mix and we are pleased to announce additional orders for this aircraft type. We plan to deploy our A350s to serve a range of new markets including long-haul missions of up to 15 hours flying time from Dubai.”

Why no -1000?

The lack of -1000 in the order is unsurprising after Emirates’ President Sir Tim Clark told reporters that he wasn’t happy with the performance of the larger A350’s engines. At a small roundtable attended by Simple Flying, Clark said that the Rolls-Royce Trent XWB-97 is not doing what he wants on the A350-1000.

The President seemed happy with the performance of the powerplants for the A350-900, noting that the first of the type will arrive in Dubai in July 2024, entering into service for the peak summer season. But for the -1000, he said that the time on wing is just not what Emirates needs, commenting that,

“If the engine did what we wanted it to do and Rolls-Royce knows what we want it to do, and so does Airbus, then we would re-enter [the Airbus A350-1000] into the assessment for our fleet.”

He detailed that the engines only manage around a quarter of the cycles that Emirates requires, which is around 2,000 – 2,500 flight hours.