By Tim Hepher
TOULOUSE, France (Reuters) - Qantas and planemaker Airbussought to cool fears of deepening turmoil in the aviationindustry on Friday as Australia's top airline took the first of20 A380 superjumbos and pledged more expansion.
Qantas said it had not noticed any deterioration inbookings in its main network or its Jetstar low-cost subsidiaryin the past four weeks, and said it was looking to buy moresuperjumbos and studying the future Airbus mid-sized A350.
The A350 lost in an epic battle against Boeing for thatsize of plane two years ago when Qantas opted for 65 787Dreamliners.
Qantas took delivery of its first A380, the world's largestairliner, at the end of a week of global financial turmoilwhich has raised new fears for an airline sector hit hard byhigh oil prices and which threatens order cancellations atAirbus and Boeing.
Among those directly caught up in the Wall Street crisiswas the world's largest aircraft leasing company by fleetvalue, International Lease Finance Corp, a unit of AIG whichhad to be rescued by the Federal Reserve to avoid collapse thisweek.
Airbus sales chief John Leahy sought to remove concernsover the EADS subsidiary's largest customer.
"On Tuesday AIG was teetering on the edge and things weredire. Right now they are completely stable again and I don'tsee any problem," Leahy told reporters.
Analysts say a collapse or disorderly sale of profitableILFC could have spread chaos among the world's airlines, manyof whom rely on lease financing to purchase fleets.
NO DEMISE
Qantas is the third airline to take delivery of the A380after Singapore Airlines and Emirates Airlines.
It will enter service from Melbourne to Los Angeles onOctober 20 and fly the Sydney-Los Angeles route on October 24.It is configured for 450 passengers including 14 in first classand 72 in business shaped in futuristic silvery-backed pods.
"We operate in some of the longest sectors in the worldgiven our location and the A380 gives us the flexibility weneed," said Alan Joyce, head of the JetStar subsidiary who hasbeen appointed Qantas chief executive from November.
"We haven't even taken delivery of the first aircraft andalready we are thinking of expanding. People were predictingthe demise of legacy airlines but I think the opposite hashappened," he said.
However with markets see-sawing wildly, he indicated thatQantas would think hard before pressing ahead with plans for astock market flotation of its Frequent Flyer loyalty scheme.
"We would do the float if market conditions were right, andif they were wrong we wouldn't do it," he told Reuters, addingthe board still planned to discuss it in September. "We arekeen to do the IPO at some stage; it is just a question oftiming."
Qantas and other customers have been hit by a two-yeardelay in deliveries due to problems in wiring the double-deckerA380.
Airbus denied reports its target of 12 deliveries could bechanged but seemed reluctant to rule that out. After parryingquestions, Airbus Chief Executive Tom Enders said he was "readyto bet a magnum of champagne that we will deliver more than11".
The Qantas plane is the seventh A380 to be delivered thisyear and the eighth since the first plane rolled off theassembly line at the end of 2007. Airbus plans to deliveranother five this year including two more to Qantas.
"I hope we are not going to find out right now that thereare more delays otherwise this ceremony would be very abruptlyhalted," outgoing Qantas chief executive Geoff Dixon quipped.
Dixon had signed the final deal to buy the first Qantassuperjumbo over dinner with top Airbus officials washed downwith 68-year-old Armagnac, distilled in the year he was born.
"When you look at this aircraft today, it is almost theperfect aircraft for long-haul travel and that is our DNA," hetold a news conference in front of the plane named afterAustralian aviation pioneer Nancy-Bird Walton.
(Editing by Hans Peters)
