Airbus Defence & Space hopes to secure the United Arab Emirates as a future operator of its A400M tactical transport, with the company set to sign new agreements with local industry in support of an offer.
“We are in very active discussions with the customer,” Jean-Brice Dumont, the European company’s head of air power, says of the potential business. “We have proven the relevance of the A400M for their missions,” he adds.
“It is about having the right localisation in the UAE. We have partnerships with more than one company, and we are going to sign MoUs [memoranda of understanding] this week.”
Those arrangements will be with regard to establishing “significant workshare in the country”, he said at the Dubai air show on 18 November.
Dumont declines to detail when the UAE might reach a decision on its future airlift requirement – or indicate how many aircraft that could require – but notes: “We are much closer to the end than we are to the beginning.”
One of the company’s current action areas seeks to increase the A400M’s approved maximum payload capacity from 37t to 40t – a change that will be achieved via software updates, rather than by making any structural or engineering changes.
“There are a number of customers, including in this region, who are demanding 40t,” Dumont says. This is understood to be due to requirements around transporting specific military vehicles and equipment.
Airbus’s defence unit has to date delivered 135 A400Ms from a current order total of 178, with the in-service fleet having accumulated more than 250,000 flight hours.
“The type of missions this aircraft takes on is expanding every day – the list is getting longer at every air show,” Dumont says. “The aircraft is delivering impeccably,” he adds.
