Sir Tim Clark, President of Emirates, warned Boeing they would refuse the delivery of 777X jets if it failed to meet its contractual performance obligations.
“We will not accept an aeroplane unless it is performing 100% to contract,” Clark told aviation consultant John Strickland in a pre-recorded online interview for Dubai’s Arabian Travel Market trade show. “Unless it is doing what they said it would do and contracted, we will not take that aeroplane.”
Emirates’ President voiced his concerns after reporting that he did not receive any performance details of the engines powering the 777X to this date, even though test flights began in 2020. The General Electric GE9X, which will be used to power the Boeing 777X, received certification from the US Federal Aviation Administration in September 2020.
Clark also said he had doubts the airline’s first Boeing 777X aircraft would come before 2024. Emirates was initially supposed to start taking the first Boeing 777X aircraft deliveries in 2020. That timeline was initially pushed back to 2022 and later to 2023.
Emirates is the largest customer of the Boeing 777X. The airline ordered 150 Boeing 777X jets back in 2013. Already during the Dubai Airshow in November 2019, Emirates reduced its order by 24 aircraft to acquire 30 Dreamliners instead.
On May 18, 2021, Emirates’ chairman Sheikh Ahmed bin Saeed Al Maktoum said the airline did not rule out a swap of up to a third of its order for more 787s, as the Gulf carrier calibrates its new post-pandemic fleet plans. “It is always a possibility,” Al Maktoum told reporters. “We are assessing our fleet requirements as we speak.”