Online Encyclopedia
Airbus Industrie
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Airbus S.A.S. is a commercial aircraft manufacturer based in Toulouse, France. It was incorporated in 2001 under French law as a simplified joint stock company or "S.A.S." (Société par Actions Simplifiée).
Airbus is jointly held by EADS (80%) and BAE SYSTEMS (20%), Europe's two largest military suppliers and manufacturers. As of 2004, its CEO is Noël Forgeard. It is also known by its former name Airbus Industrie, or just Airbus.
Airbus employs around 40,000 people in several European countries. Final assembly is carried out in Toulouse, France and Hamburg, Germany, although construction occurs at a number of plants across Europe.
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History
Airbus Industrie began as a consortium of European aviation firms to compete with American companies such as Boeing and McDonnell Douglas. It was set up in 1970 following an agreement between Aerospatiale (France) and Deutsche Aerospace (Germany) (joined by CASA of Spain in 1971) to develop the A300, which first flew in 1972.
Initially the success of the consortium was fitful but by 1979 there were 81 aircraft in service. British Aerospace (now BAE SYSTEMS) joined the consortium at the end of 1979, with 38 percent stake each for the Germans and French, 20 percent for the British, and the Spanish firm with four percent.
It was a fairly loose alliance but that changed in 2000 when DASA, Aerospatiale and CASA merged to form EADS and in 2001 when BAE and EADS formed the Airbus Integrated Company to coincide with the development of the new Airbus A380, which will seat 555 passengers and be the world's largest commercial passenger jet when it enters service in 2006.
Civilian products
The Airbus product line started with the A300, the world's first twin-aisle, twin-engined aircraft. A shorter variant of the A300 is known as the A310. Building on its success, airbus launched the A320 with its innovative fly-by-wire control system. The A320 was a great commercial success. The A318 and A319 are shorter derivatives with some of the latter under construction for the corporate biz-jet market (Airbus Corporate Jet). A stretched version is known as the A321 and is proving competitive with later models of the Boeing 737.
The longer range products, the twin-jet A330 and the four-jet A340, have efficient wings, enhanced by winglets. The Airbus A340-500 has an operating range of 13,921 kilometres (8,650 miles), the longest range of any commercial jet. These are competing strongly with the larger Boeing products and may partly explain the cessation of airliner production at Lockheed in 1983 and the take-over of McDonnell Douglas by the surviving US builder of long-distance airliners, Boeing, in 1996-1997. The company is particularly proud of its use of fly-by-wire technologies and the common cockpit and systems in use throughout the aircraft family, which make it much easier to train crew.
Military products
In January 1999 Airbus established a separate company, Airbus Military S.A.S., to undertake development and production of a turboprop powered military transport aircraft (the Airbus Military A400M.) The A400M is being developed by several NATO members, Belgium, France, Germany, Luxembourg, Spain, Turkey, and the UK, as an alternative to the C-130 Hercules. Expansion in the military aircraft market will reduce, but not negate, Airbus's exposure to the effects of cyclical downturns in civil aviation.
- Airbus A400M
- A310 MRTT (Multi Role Tanker Transport)
- A330 MRTT
Competition with Boeing
Airbus also argues that some of the pork barrel military contracts awarded to Boeing are in effect a form of subsidy (see the Boeing KC-767 military contracting scandal). Boeing counters that Airbus benefits even more than itself on this charge, since the owners of Airbus, and its affiliated companies are Europe's largest military suppliers. Airbus is also in the process of entering the military plane market. Airbus also contends that large tax breaks offered to Boeing are defacto subsidies and are in violation of the 1992 agreement and WTO rules.
The latest scramble involving Airbus and Boeing surround the American company's latest offering, the 7E7 Dreamliner. EU trade officials are questioning the funding provided by the Japanese Government and Japanese companies for the launch of the 7E7. Boeing argues that future growth in air travel will center around more point-to-point flying between secondary cities rather than cramming more passengers into larger planes via large hubs like London Heathrow, or Chicago O'Hare. Airbus however has launched the rumored A350, a counter-attack in the form of an updated A330-200. The A350 will use new technologies to compete with the Dreamliner, but it is doubtful if Airbus can fund the development of both the A350 and the A380 at the same time.
For the first time in its 33-year history, Airbus delivered more jetliners in 2003 than Boeing. After losing supremacy to America in the battle of commercial airliner sales in the 1950's and 1960's, Europe seems to have regained the upper ground. Industry analysts widely attribute this to Airbus's largely younger product line, compared to many of Boeing's older designs; the 737 for example still uses components designed in the 1950s. The 747 was designed in the late 1960s, and the 757 and 767 were conceived in the late 1970s. Boeing claims the Boeing 777 has outsold its Airbus counterparts, focusing only on the A340, however the A330/A340 combined family (same fuselage and systems with differences only in number of engines and manufactured in the same production line) has out-sold the 777 by a considerable margin.
In October 2004, Boeing filed a complaint with the World Trade Organization, claiming that Airbus had violated the 1992 bilateral accord when it received what Boeing deems as "unfair" subsidies from the European Union. Airbus retaliated by filing another complaint, contesting that Boeing had also violated the accord when it received tax breaks from the U.S. Government. If the WTO arbitrates in this case (once the 60-day period of consultations set by the WTO ends), both companies could face cut-downs in financial aid from their Governments.
Currently there are around 1600 Airbus aircraft in service, with Airbus having around 50 percent of outstanding build orders (1999). But Airbus products are still outnumbered 6 to 1 by in-service Boeings (there are over 4000 Boeing 737s alone in service, for example). This, however, does not take into account Airbus's late entry into the modern jet airliner market (1972 vs. 1958 for Boeing) and that Airbus's sales are almost completely civilian (as compared to the numerous Boeing aircraft in US and other countries' military service).
International manufacturing presence
The two assembly plants of Airbus are in Toulouse, France and Hamburg, Germany.
Airbus, however, has a number of other plants in different European countries, reflecting its foundation as a consortium. An original solution to the problem of moving aircraft parts between the different factories and the assembly plants is the use of "Beluga" specially enlarged jets, capable of carrying entire sections of fuselage of Airbus aircraft. An exception to this scheme is the upcoming A380, whose fuselage and wings are too large for sections to be carried by the Beluga. Large A380 parts are brought by ship to Bordeaux, and then trucked to the Toulouse assembly plant. The road had to be specially enlarged to accommodate the special convoys.
North America is an important region to Airbus in terms of both aircraft sales and suppliers. 2,000 of the total of approximately 4,600 Airbus jetliners sold by Airbus around the world, representing every aircraft in its product line from the 107-seat A318 to the 555-passenger A380, are ordered by North American customers. US contractors supporting an estimated 120,000 jobs earned estimated $5.5 billion (2003) worth of business. For example, the A380 has 51% American content in terms of work share value.
External links
- Official Airbus website http://www.airbus.com/
- Large plane war http://www.buffalo.edu/reporter/vol35/vol35n40/articles/Boeing.html
- An editorial from BBC on Airbus http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/3722888.stm
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