Airbus (AIB, Toulouse Blagnac) CEO Fabrice Bregier has confirmed plans for an upgraded New Engine Option (NEO) version of its A380 as well as a stretched variant just days after the type's largest customer, Emirates (EK, Dubai International), reacted angrily to reports the manufacturer was considering closing the line on the back of weak demand.

Speaking on the second day of Airbus' annual investor event, Bregier said plans to upgrade the twindeck widebody were in the pipeline but did not offer any specific timeframes.

"We will one day launch an A380neo and one day launch a stretched A380," he was quoted as saying by the Australian Business Traveller.

Early last week, Emirates' president Tim Clark strongly protested remarks made by Airbus finance director Harald Wilhelm who alluded to a possible end of production for the A380. The aircraft has failed to garner any new orders this year with existing ones from Virgin Atlantic, Hong Kong Airlines, Air Austral, and Skymark Airlines, either in jeopardy or set to be dropped outright.

"I am not particularly happy as you can imagine," Clark told Reuters news agency. "We are on the hook for this plane. I get pretty miffed when we have put so much at stake."

Emirates will operate over 140 A380-800s over the next few years and has repeatedly pushed Airbus to develop an NEO model offering improved performance. It has indicated that it would consider replacing its entire fleet A380 with an upgraded variant.

“(The A380) is our flagship and there is a distinct possibility that the NEO, if built, will give us an improvement in economics of up to 10 to 12 per cent so that is definitely worth having," Clark added.

He went on to urge the Europeans to step their marketing game up in a bid to improve the aircraft's sales which, market analysts have speculated, could find renewed appeal given the recent sharp decline in global cost of oil.

Airbus developed a stretched version of the A380 - dubbed the A380-900 - but shelved the project in May 2010 when demand for the aircraft dwindled. Overall, the aircraft would have capacity for roughly 900 passengers in an all-economy configuration and would measure 79.4m from bow to stern – 6.4m longer than today's A380.