A380: Further Wiring Design Delays

Add another six-month increment to the bill. The largest project of its kind, Windows Vista Airbus A380 has been delayed again, again for wiring design problems. Airbus plans to announce a definite delivery date within the next four weeks.

Continuing industrialization challenges with the wiring of production aircraft have been identified and are being tackled. Consequently, from what is known today, there will be further delays, says Airbus on Deutsche Welle (German public tv).

That's now 18 months of delay, thought to be caused by a switch from copper to (lighter) aluminum wiring, which the CAD software (or the CAD operators) did-not/could-not design for correctly. The cost to the owner is some 3.8 billions euros (US$4.8 billion) in lower revenue, because 16 fewer of the e300-million aircraft will be shipped next year.