News today that Airbus, the European aircraft enterprise and not-too-long-ago wunderkind of the global aviation world has dropped the ball *again* and will be pushing first deliveries of their huge A380 twin-deck behemoth for another entire year. The parent company, EADS, is projecting that this second, major slip will cost them $6.1 billion in operating profit.

Parking the whole "man, I get that it's a complicated thing to create a new thing like this, but how could they have messed this so badly?" line of thought for a moment, let's think about the downstream implications. Singapore Airlines and Emirates - two of the most successful global players, with well deserved reputations for service and strength via small-but-well-located hubs as their home bases - have committed to buying a whack of these machines. Which means, they did not commit to other alternatives, such as the latest Boeing 747 for instance. The result of these slips means that their entire business plan has been thrown for a loop, for years to come. Airports have done major upgrades, pilots have been trained, revenue has been projected. Just as traffic from China looks set to ramp - prime business for both these guys - they look to be short of capacity. And Virgin, who seems to have ongoing gifts of "oopsies" from British Airways landing in their lap, is also left holding the bag. And Lufthansa, FedEx...da da da.

I guess after all the changes in the Airbus executive suite, it's better to call it and take the hit, but I can't help but think that this could have all been avoided. The Boeing folks in Chicago/Seattle, Embraer in Brazil etc. must be doing all they can not to high five around the office.

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