Tim Clark, president of Emirates airline, said he doesn't think the distraction will affect the 90 Airbus A380 superjumbo jets the airline has on order. He said he would like to order 40 more of the 525-seat, double-decker jets, but the hub airport in Dubai, where the airline is based, is too small to hold that many.

Clark was speaking at an industry conference in Seattle.

"Good luck," he said of the merger.

"It might, in a slightly obtuse way, bring some order" to the ownership structure of EADS "so there would no longer be a need to equalize work ratios" between Germany and France, he said. "This is an opportunity to straighten things out."

EADS, which is strong in civil aviation, is controlled by a group of French and German public and industrial interests. The company has warned it would walk away from the deal with defense company BAE Systems that was publicly proposed earlier this month if the new group were to suffer excessive state meddling.

A German document reported on earlier this week by Reuters says Berlin is unhappy with plans to split the ownership of the merged company so that EADS would hold 60 percent and BAE Systems the remainder. The paper said the 60-40 ratio "does not correctly reflect the actual value which is closer to 70 to 30."

EADS and BAE together employ tens of thousands of workers across Britain and continental Europe. (Reporting by Alwyn Scott; Editing by Muralikumar Anantharaman)

• A Permanent Economic Emergency