Emirates Airline cancels order for 70 Airbus A350’s

Emirates Airline has cancelled an order for 70 of Airbus’s A350 wide-bodied aircraft, the plane maker announces.

Airbus said the cancellation had followed “ongoing discussions with the airline in light of their fleet requirement review”.

In 2007, Dubai’s Emirates Airline placed 50 orders for the A350-900 and 20 for the A350-1000, with deliveries due from 2019.

A spokesperson for Emirates said the airline was “reviewing our fleet requirements”.

Airbus said it was confident that new orders “in the coming months” would compensate for the Emirates cancellation.

“There’s no impact on the program as deliveries were scheduled to start at the end of the decade,” a spokesman said.

In a statement, Airbus said it was “very confident” in its A350 XWB program, adding that it had 742 firm orders and it expected the order book to continue growing in 2014.

“Interest in the game-changing A350 has always been very high with customers,” it said.

Airbus added that Emirates had recently “reiterated its confidence in Airbus products, particularly by praising the A380”.

Emirates Airline ordered an extra 50 A380 superjumbo planes at the last Dubai Airshow.

However, investors took the news of the cancelled A350s badly, with Airbus shares closing down more than 3% in Paris. Rolls-Royce shares fell more than 5% in London.

The A350 long-range jet is a competitor to Boeing’s 777 and 787 Dreamliner planes. The design of the A350 was changed in 2006.

Emirates announced it had ordered 150 of Boeing’s 777X planes at the Dubai Air Show last year.