I think lessors have all but given up on the A380 - clearly no secondary market for the aircraft and question marks over future Airbus support for it (apart from EK). That alongside no export-credit guarantees for Airbus for the forseeable future (and I don't think it will come back for the A380 even if it does for other Airbus products) is going to impact financing costs.

That said, with global debt costs dropping commensurately, the credit guarantee costs I think balance out to a certain extent.

EK isn't a stranger to capital markets (they still have outstanding bonds), so I expect that the bridge loan is going to be in place until they can turn to issuing bonds etc. to purchase A380s rather than turning to lessors. A lot of those operating leases are going to turn into on-balance sheet debt, I think: EK might be able to hand lessors a loss by buying cut price A380 frames from them after the end of the term and flog the A380 fleet for another 10-15 years.

Either that or they suck it up and move to an A350/77W fleet and take the PR hit, but that's unlikely imho. They'll just trod along with single digit margins as usual and double down on their leveraged airline gamble.

That said, with load factors dropping (as shown in their last annual report) and clearly demand not expanding as they hope, EK is going to be under financial pressure in the short term - I think last year's profit was essentially made out of a couple of sale and leasebacks (either preserve a profit so there's a bonus share for employees, or the owner doesn't get the cash they need), but there aren't many assets left to do that to.