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Airbus in Flat Spin ?

tomahawk6

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If Airbus wasnt supported by so many governments it would have gone into bankruptcy. Christian Streiff tried to save the company but the French government evidently felt the price was too high.

http://www.americanthinker.com/articles.php?article_id=5934

“I progressively came to the conviction that the governance of Airbus did not allow my plan to succeed,” Streiff said in an interview to appear in French daily Le Figaro’s Tuesday edition.
 
Without too much "pot calling the kettle black", most aerospace companies are on some sort of government life support. Perhaps Boeing is one of the few companies which "could" survive on it's commercial airliner business, but a very large fraction of its business is in the military products. The fact that the vast majority of the military products were designed and built by companies which no longer exist outside of Boeing's corporate framework should be a warning sign that the defence contractor business isn't viable in the current form.

Of course,looking at Bombardier, you don't even have to be too much into defence contracting to fall into that trap......
 
The problem I see with Airbus is that the government did not want to fight the unions to help the bottom line. Sacking Streiff was easier than fixing the problems. The US car companies are very much like Airbus, except the unions dont have anywhere near the clout that they do in France.

 
From what I understand different versions of design software were in use at different locations and changes could not propagate between them in real time due to incompatibilities. Since just about any change also effects wiring it accumulated the most problems.

Bloomberg Article on Airbus 380
 
DBA.....if that Bloomberg article is correct I find it very unsettleing....course I had no plans to ever get on that big white whale at all.
I've never, speaking only as a fare-paying passenger, liked the Airbus aircraft anyways. Just my opinion.
Gene
 
Genetk44 said:
I've never, speaking only as a fare-paying passenger, liked the Airbus aircraft anyways. Just my opinion.

My preferences lie with airlines, not aircraft.  The internal finish and sardine conditions are dictated by the airline, not the manufacturer.  If you want service and some legroom (even in economy!) try Emirates or Singapore Airlines.  Personally, I'd fly in economy on anything with a SingAir tail long before I'd subject myself to the hostile indifference of an Air Canada cabin crew...

 
dapaterson....I tend to agree with you but since this thread was dealing with a manufacturer and not airlines or their staff...or service....
 
dapaterson said:
My preferences lie with airlines, not aircraft.  The internal finish and sardine conditions are dictated by the airline, not the manufacturer.  If you want service and some legroom (even in economy!) try Emirates or Singapore Airlines.  Personally, I'd fly in economy on anything with a SingAir tail long before I'd subject myself to the hostile indifference of an Air Canada cabin crew...

Emirates was good, but Thai was outstanding!

I would rather be shipped in a dog crate on a russian cargo plane than fly Air Canada.
 
COBRA-6 said:
Emirates was good, but Thai was outstanding!

I would rather be shipped in a dog crate on a russian cargo plane than fly Air Canada.

+1 for Emirates - makes the trip from London to Dub bearable.

However you aint getting me on a Russia A/C at all
  Sorry it makes the the CF's worn Herc look new...
 
On the other hand Emirates puts 10 across in their 777s that fly from LHR to DXB, when just about every other major uses 9 across.  I agree their service was pretty good however.
 
Fedex ditches Airbus for Boeing  
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/6126206.stm

Fedex has cancelled its order for Airbus aircraft and switched its order to rival Boeing instead.
Fedex Express said it had cancelled its order for 10 Airbus A380-800F superjumbo because of delivery delays.

Instead it has ordered 15 Boeing 777 freighters - to be delivered between 2009 and 2011 - and has an option to take a further 10 aircraft.

Airbus said it regretted the decision but understood Fedex's "need to urgently address capacity issues".

Shares in Airbus owner EADS closed more than 3% lower on the French stock exchange on the news.

'Best decision'

"The availability and delivery timing of this aircraft, coupled with its attractive payload range and economics, make this choice the best decision for Fedex," Fedex chairman and chief executive Frederick W Smith said of the decision to swap to Boeing.
More on link

In addition:

Virgin defers A380 by four years 
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/6089198.stm

The past two years have been dark times for the A380 project
Virgin Atlantic is to defer its order for the new Airbus A380 by four years.
The airline had ordered six of the new superjumbos for delivery in 2009, but now wants to delay their arrival until 2013.

The project has been dogged by repeated delays, which have cost senior managers their jobs and led to big customers threatening to renegotiate orders.

There had been speculation that Virgin would ditch the A380, but the firm says it still has confidence in the plane.

Virgin is now arguing that it wants the aircraft to prove itself in commercial service for several years before it puts its own A380s into operation.

The airline is now extending its leases on a number of Boeing 747-400 jumbo jets to cover the delay.
More on link
 
Still More:

Airbus woes hit parent firm EADS
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/6127492.stm

Airbus-owner EADS has reported a net loss for the July to September period after it was hit by problems with its giant A380 passenger jet.
EADS reported a net loss of 195m euros ($250m; £131m) during the third quarter, against net income of 279m euros in the same period last year.

The Franco-German defence and aerospace firm said charges relating to delays with the A380 had cost it 1bn euros.

On Tuesday, Fedex ditched an order for the plane in favour of rival Boeing.

The US logistics firm said it was cancelling its order for 10 Airbus A380-800F superjumbo freighters because of delivery delays, and was ordering 15 Boeing 777 freighters instead.

EADS said it was awaiting decisions from two other Airbus A380 freighter customers, UPS and International Lease Finance Corporation, on whether they intended to go ahead with their orders.
More after the jump
 
Implosion slowed only by the taxpayer ...

http://www.americanthinker.com/2007/03/the_airbus_tragedy.html
The Airbus Tragedy
By Thomas Lifson
Like characters in an ancient Greek tragedy, players in the Airbus drama are betraying their fatal flaws, and moving, almost inevitably, toward a dénouement that will bring serious misfortune to all. Despite failure upon failure, no one is willing to suggest openly killing the troubled A 380 program, which seems to destined to drag down not just the still viable parts of the company, but also the workers, localities hosting factories, and even the governments of France and Germany.

Airbus wanly puts an official happy face on the setbacks of the past week, and is squandering its credibility - an essential quality for an airliner manufacturer -- at an alarming rate.

The sole remaining customer for the freighter version of its A 380 super jumbo canceled late last week, yet the company insists that the freighter program will live on, because someday, some freighter version somehow may be ordered. Boeing, meanwhile, has booked more than 50 orders for its only slightly smaller 747-8F freighter, and promises 24 percent lower fuel burn per ton, 20 percent lower trip costs and 23 percent lower ton-mile costs than the A380F. It is hard to see how any new customers would be attracted to the Airbus cargo craft.

UPS, the last customer for the A 380F, makes no secret of its unhappiness with the way Airbus treated it:

    "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," it said.

...

The financial markets don't believe the company's optimistic gloss:

    Shares in EADS have slumped by about 11.5 percent since the plan was announced on Wednesday because of scepticism that the restructuring can be applied in the face of a highly unionised workforce and political pressures.

Airbus unions are having nothing of it, either. Tuesday, 15,000 French workers went on strike and marched through Toulouse, waving banners, blowing whistles, and setting off firecrackers, joined by thousands more in other Airbus French manufacturing locations.

The German workers are not happy either. Here a rough translation of a workers' screed:

    Unlimited strike in all Airbus plants. European-wide! Now! The Power-8 Program must be cancelled completely! Permanent and agency workers, workers with limited-term contracts of employment, workers of suppliers: we are one single workforce! Whoever attacks one of us, attacks all of us. The struggle must be waged rigorously, actively and with democratic consultation and decision making.

While some elements of the Power8 program make sense, such as the use of more outsourcing, other elements do not fit together as a coherent whole. The company plans to downsize its workforce and increase the rate of production of existing airplanes as a way of generating more cash, which it desperately needs. Moving assembly of the A 380 and A 320 airplanes from plant to plant, as the company intends, inevitably will require worker retraining, so a production speed-up will have to wait for the remaining workers to acquire new skills or apply old skills in new settings.

Perhaps worst of all, domestic French and intra-EU politics are becoming more, not less involved in company decision-making, aggravating the tragic flaw that has gotten the company into its existing mess. Instead of operating more like a rational private business, as the company must, state intervention looms even larger.


...

Sarkozy's presidential opponent, Socialist Segolene Royal, not only pledged public monies to Airbus, she also promised to suspend Power8 if elected, and for good measure repudiated market forces, saying

    "The state must emerge from its lethargy and inertia and stop thinking that the market can solve everything,
" Royal said.

...

All this talk of recapitalization, state aid and the failure of Airbus is an admission that the company is no longer self-sufficient as a commercial enterprise. No satisfactory alternative exists to extricate from the corner into which Airbus has painted itself.

It was a huge mistake to pursue the glory of the world's biggest airliner. A future president of France may be able to fly to a summit meeting with the president of the United States and sneer, "Mine's bigger," but it will be an empty boast, even if both presidents aren't females, as they might well be by the time the A 380 flies in normal service.

As orders for the A 380 have languished, Boeing's mid-size new technology 787 is enjoying such unprecedented success that the company says it is seriously considering ramping up production from 7 to 10 airplanes per month, a commitment that would require huge investments from both Boeing and its suppliers, and confidence that demand will remain robust for many years.

If Boeing's promises for the 747-8 and 787 planes come true, it is hard to imagine many new orders for the A 380, yet that airplane continues to suck up cash, labor, and especially engineering talent that are needed to develop new medium and small models. The most successful current Airbus model, the narrow-body A 320 has fallen behind its rival Boeing model in terms of new refinements. Even worse, the planned rival for the Boeing 787 will not be on the market until 2014 at the earliest, with further delays not an impossibility.

Given the fatal flaw of state backers, sits own two-headed management structure with French and German executives sharing power and often pulling in different directions, and the anger of its unions over the consequences of mismanagement, the prospect is for matters to get even worse.

Once a symbol of European unity and promise, Airbus has become a contentious issue dividing Germany and France. Like the Ancient Mariner's albatross, this bird brings no good.

Thomas Lifson is editor and publisher of American Thinker.
 
Interesting; I saw GAPs post about FedEX cancelling their order and was surprised at the date because I thought I'd seen that article only a couple of days ago.  Seems it was deja-vu all over again.  UPS has done the same thing.

http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/03/02/business/web.0302-airbusclark.php

UPS cancels Airbus A380 order
By Nicola Clark

Friday, March 2, 2007
PARIS: United Parcel Service, the last remaining customer for the cargo version of the Airbus's A380 superjumbo jet, said Friday that it was walking away from its $2.8 billion order, citing concerns the troubled planemaker would not be able to meet a revised delivery schedule agreed last week.

The cancellation by UPS, four months after its rival FedEx also abandoned an order for 10 of the planes, leaves Airbus without a customer for the A380 freighter. It represents a fresh blow to the company, which this week announced details of a radical restructuring plan that is expected to result in the loss of around 10,000 jobs across Europe over the next four years.

"This is another slap in the face for Airbus," said Doug McVitie, a consultant at Arran Aerospace in Dinan, France. "UPS will probably turn to Boeing now for good."

The move follows a confirmation by Airbus late Monday that it had halted work on the A380 freighter in order to divert engineering resources to the passenger version of the plane, now two years behind schedule.

"This is a decision, it's final," said Mark Giuffre, a spokesman for UPS in Louisville, Kentucky.

UPS said its decision would be formally presented to Airbus at the first opportunity allowed under the terms of an agreement reached last week that gave either party the right to cancel the order. The precise date has not been disclosed, but John Leahy, the Airbus chief operating officer for customers, said last week that the date fell in the second half of this year.

The announcement appeared to catch Airbus by surprise. In an e-mail exchange hours before the announcement, Leahy indicated that he had not been expecting a decision by the parcel delivery company for some time.

"The order remains on our books until UPS makes a final decision," Leahy wrote. "As they said... Later this year."

UPS, the largest package delivery company in the world, had originally expected its order — valued at $2.8 billion at list prices — to be delivered beginning in 2010. The company disclosed Friday that the latest agreement with Airbus had pushed those deliveries back by two years, to 2012.

"UPS had intended to complete an internal study of whether it could wait until 2012 for the aircraft, but now understands that Airbus is diverting employees from the A380 freighter program to work on the passenger version of the plane," the company said.

"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 Airline. "We no longer are confident that Airbus can adhere to that schedule."

Barbara Kracht, an Airbus spokeswoman, declined to comment on whether the planemaker would seek to persuade UPS to change its mind.

"We respect the customer's decision," Kracht said. "UPS is and remains a reliable business partner for Airbus."

Analysts said the Airbus decision to reallocate personnel to other programs made perfect sense from an industrial point of view.

"All available resources are needed for work on the A350 and the A380 passenger version," said Richard Aboulafia, an analyst with the Teal Group in Fairfax, Virginia. "Demand for the cargo A380 is minimal at best."

Airbus has forecast a market for as many as 400 cargo versions of the A380.

Last month, UPS announced an order for 27 Boeing 767-300ER freighters worth about $3.8 billion. Those planes are due to be delivered between 2009 and 2012. UPS said at the time that the Boeing order was not related to its review of its A380 order.

For Airbus, there may still be a silver lining in the UPS decision. The planemaker has said repeatedly in recent months that the lack of a large order book for the A380 freighter made it possible for the company to focus its energy on getting the 166 passenger versions of the plane on order delivered to airlines as quickly as possible. With UPS now abandoning its 10 production slots, Airbus should be able to offer them to other key airline customers, such as Emirates or Qantas, who are eagerly awaiting their planes.

The parent company of Airbus, European Aeronautic Defense & Space, warned last month that A380 production problems and the continued weakness of the dollar against the euro would push the company to a significant financial loss for 2006. EADS reports its full-year results next Friday.

More on link.

I'd say that Airbus is sponsoring it's own deathrace to extinction.
 
I would suggest forwarding this thread to any person, reporter or Member of Parliament who opposes the C-17 or C-130J buy on the grounds that Airbus has a viable product in the (unyet built) A-400, or that we would get the hypothetical A-400 in any reasonable time frame...............
 
Heh.... even if Airbus were to give asurances that we could get some A400s in a reasonnable time frame.... would you feel comfortable flying in em?

Airbus, a corporation that straddles several borders of the European union & where several governments meddle into it's activities.  A blueprint for disaster, followed by a bailout, folowed by another disaster, followed by another bailout, disaster, bailout, disaster, bailout........ etc,
 
The MND got out out of the lobbying business at the right time ;).

Mark
Ottawa
 
I have every confidence Airbus is capable of delivery in a "reasonable time frame," as long as one considers 2009 2012 2015 2020 to be a reasonable delivery date.
 
Airbus has problems with the unions now as the company wants to lay off workers.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20070315/bs_afp/franceeuropeaerospacecompanystructureairbuseads_070315063157

TOULOUSE, France (AFP) - Tens of thousands of workers at Airbus are expected to walk off the job Friday in a highly unusual show of Europe-wide union power against plans by the struggling aircraft manufacturer to slash 10,000 posts.

Trade unions predict tens of thousands of staff at all Airbus sites in Europe will down tools and hold protest meetings to increase pressure against the company's "Power8" restructuring scheme.

Such co-ordinated Europe-wide protests organised by trade unions are highly unusual.

In Hamburg, Germany, the powerful IG Metall union said it expected 10,000 demonstrators to converge on the city centre. An earlier day of protest in France on March 6 brought 12,000-15,000 people into the streets of Toulouse, southwest France, where Airbus is based, and unions there were expecting similar support.

In Britain, the Transport and General Workers' Union expected several thousand people to back a demonstration in Chester, near a factory at Broughton in Wales.

And in Spain, two unions, the CCOO and the UGT, have called on 9,000 workers at seven sites to protest.

Unions here issued a joint statement condemning "this restructuring plan which will have dramatic consequences but is not justified."

One union source objected in particular to "jobs being cut when work in hand is overflowing."

The protests are set against campaigning for a presidential election in France in which unemployment is a hot subject.

The company says that the crisis is "extremely serious" and that it can no longer delay making cost savings. But there is concern among analysts over whether the Airbus parent company, the aerospace group EADS, and Airbus will in fact be able to implement the full plan.

The cuts, together with the total or partial disposal of six sites, are intended to save 5.0 billion euros (6.6 billion dollars) by 2010 and pull the company out of a crisis caused by delays to the A380 superjumbo program, seen as critical to Airbus' bid to catch up with US rival Boeing.

EADS last week published results revealing a first-ever operating loss at Airbus of 572 million euros (752 million dollars) in 2006 in contrast to a profit of 2.3 billion euros in 2005.

But the group is also assuring customers and investors that it does not face an imminent cash crisis.

Announcement of details of the restructuring on February 28 came as campaigning in the presidential election in France in April and May intensified and amid tension between French and German interests over where cuts should fall.

It was also followed by signs of bickering between French and German unions.

Brokers Goldman Sachs, issuing a recommendation to its clients to buy shares in EADS, suggested on Monday that the "reduced" expectation for EADS "provides both a suitable backdrop for negotiations about Power8 with unions and politicians, especially in France."
 
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