From the UPS web site:

UPS today announced its intent to cancel later this year an order for 10 Airbus A380 freighters. The final cancellation decision will be formally presented to Airbus on the first date specified under an agreement reached last week that gives either party the right to terminate the order. Last week’s agreement specified a revised delivery schedule that delayed UPS’s first A380 jumbo freighter from 2010 to 2012. UPS originally expected its first freighter in 2009. UPS had intended to complete an internal study of whether it could wait until 2012 for the aircraft, but now understands Airbus is diverting employees from the A380 freighter program to work on the passenger version of the plane. “Based on our previous discussions, we had felt that 2012 was a reasonable estimate of when Airbus could supply this plane,” said David Abney, UPS’s chief operating officer and president of UPS Airlines. “We no longer are confident that Airbus can adhere to that schedule.”

A couple things here. First, while I would love to lambast Airbus as a politically-motivated company as an excuse for why they’re missing deadlines, but that’s not necessarily true. Private companies miss deadlines all the time, and there’s often nothing that can be done about it. Of course, there are some political considerations, such as European nations forcing Airbus to have production facilities in their own countries, which partly led to a big wiring problem that has been a lion’s share of the delay.

But there’s a key thing here. Airbus is shifting employees from their freighter version to their passenger version. Now, I’m not an expert on these matters, but I would think that a fairly stripped-down freighter would make it to market more quickly than a passenger plane, which has all sorts of seats, trim, and detail work involved. So why are they shifting to the passenger plane? Will it make more money quickly, and prove that they can at least produce aircraft?

Nope. But what it will do is make sure that people are on Airbus A380’s sooner. The politicians don’t want boring A380’s with UPS logos on the side, that nobody can say they’ve flown in except the pilots. They want people to see and fly on these planes, to show off how wonderful Airbus is.

Remember, Airbus is largely controlled by politicians. Making money isn’t their goal, so they won’t really worry too much about not having UPS on board. They want to show off a shiny new toy to their constituents, and you can’t do that if it’s just carrying packages, can you?