Etihad posts record A380 reliability performance

Etihad Airways recorded 99.8% reliability in its first year of operating the Airbus A380-800, the best performance level of any airline to have introduced the aircraft, the carrier said April 11 after receiving the Airbus Operational Reliability Performance award. The 0.2% of reliability problems in the January-December 2015 period did not include any cancellations, the Abu Dhabi-based carrier added. Etihad SVP-technical Jeff Wilkinson said the airline’s performance came down to “the sheer hard work and commitment … of our engineering teams.” He noted the airline also had one of the highest rates of daily utilization of the A380, with a typical turnaround time of only two hours, which underlined its achievement. Wilkinson said preparations for the A380’s service entry started more than a year before the initial delivery in December 2014, with a cross-functional entry into service team that included representatives from technical operations, logistics, flight operations and other divisions of the airline. <br/>