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Squishy, because of the costs of airliners and the development time, no company will even bend a single piece of aluminum until they have buyers on the hook. During that build time is where Airbus has been finding the issues.
Literally, there was a pile of orders on the book before the first test plane even had it's first flight, and certainly well before any assembly occured.
Without a set delivery date, the airlines won't come on board, as they are planning based on forecast traffic, trends, and required or prefered retirement dates of existing fleet. Airlines need to know anywhere from 1 to 5 years ahead to make thier plans. There is really no way that Airbus could have forseen all the issues, but it isn't unusual for a new plane to have delays.
Fedex is specific case where they have needs and they don't have time to wait - and they are going to get 15 planes instead of 10. Things change.
Webby, don't book your flights yet. Oct 2007 is looking more and more like spring 2008 the way things are going, and with the second head of Airbus out the door in the last 110 days, things haven't settled down.
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