DAE cancels all Airbus orders

DAE Capital, leasing arm of Dubai Aerospace Enterprise (DAE), has cancelled all of its aircraft orders with Airbus, worth $5.8 billion (in list prices) for 45 planes. Confirming the same, Justin Dubon, a Toulouse, France-based spokesperson for Airbus told Gulf News in a statement: "Our latest O&D's (orders and deliveries) confirms that DAE cancelled 34 A320s and 11 A350-900 and is no longer an Airbus customer." Questions sent to DAE went unanswered. Poor market conditions forced the Dubai-based aerospace company to cancel almost half of its Airbus orders for A350s and A320s (worth $4.7 billion) in addition to orders for 32 Boeing 737s earlier in March. The fresh cancellations, however, are not likely to pose a big blow to the European plane manufacturer considering it has amassed orders for over 777 planes until now this year (including orders at the last month’s Paris Air Show). Article continues below “Dubai on Wednesday announced a huge development programme to create a global aviation hub – through its 10-year Dubai International expansion plan. If a jaundiced eye is cast on that news, then yesterday’s news [of order cancellation] seems to be a support for questioning the perpetual sunrise view that is extant in Dubai,” points out Addison Schonland, Partner, AirInsight, an aviation and aerospace consultancy focused on industry competitive intelligence. DAE Capital had placed an order for 200 aircraft in 2007 divided equally between Airbus and Boeing, aiming to become one of the world's biggest aircraft lessors. And last week, its Managing Director, Khalifa H Al Daboos, said that organisational changes are on cards for the company, following the exit of Robert Genise, the CEO of DAE Capital.