The A380 superjumbo: The white elephant

The Independent ^ | November 22, 2006 | Michael Harrison

[Paul Ross]

No material from Independent Online is permitted on Free Republic.

[Paul Ross]

The argument about Boeing being a monopoly is, frankly, an inversion of the reality...with rather clear evidence of not only subsidization of Airbus to predatorily destroy Boeing (a private, free enterprise entity) market share...but massive non-tariff barriers in Airbus's home turf: aggressive Euro state-owned airlines "Buy Airbus Only" policies, for example.

This following observation is dead-on:

One third of each new Airbus programme is funded by repayable launch aid from the taxpayer. This, and the fact that it does not have to answer to a conventional set of shareholders...

While the loans are technically "repayable" for the record...they aren't being repaid.

I like how the article summarized:

"This veritable ocean liner of the sky will go down in history like the Concorde." Perhaps not the best of analogies, but you know what he was trying to say.

[Dont Mention the War]

The latest Airbus, hailed as a model of European co-operation, is running two years' late. So will this project ever truly fly?

Let's hope not!

[Dont Mention the War]

But inside that giant cigar-shaped aluminium tube was a vast and empty void.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the Clinton Presidential Library.

[LibFreeOrDie]

...Broughton in North Wales and Filton near Bristol get to make the wings. But it also means that each completed set of wings has to make a remarkable journey to the final assembly site in France by way of container ship, river barge and specially adapted road trailer. With the main fuselage having to travel from Germany and the tailfin from Spain, no wonder M. Streiff thought there was a simpler way.

There was a fascinating documentary on HBO or PBS a few years ago, showing how they schlep the huge subassemblies around Europe. The river barge just managed to make it under an ancient stone bridge. No wonder they can't get the thing together!

[Paul Ross]

Airbus's latest 20-year forecast for the world jet market, to be published this morning, will put demand for the A380 at about 1,500 aircraft - almost four times the number that Boeing thinks will be sold.

I think Boeing was actually rather generous in its estimates...LOL!

But that continues to look like an optimistic assumption, for everything appears to be conspiring against the A380, not least the value of the dollar, the currency in which all commercial aircraft are sold. When Airbus launched the programme six years ago, it needed to sell 300 aircraft to cover its costs. Because of the way the dollar has weakened, Airbus now needs to sell 420 planes. The order book stands at 149.

And this little "problem", i.e., the weakening dollar...likely will get a whole lot worse as presaged by the continuing, non-stop increase in the trade imbalance. And who knows what the impact of bugging out of Iraq will be...

The American mail company FedEx has become the first launch customer to cancel its order for 10 freighter versions of the aircraft, and at least one passenger airline has indicated it could follow suit. If the cancellations turn from a trickle to a flood, then the consequences would be catastrophic.

T I M B E R ! Look Out Below!!!!

[Williams]

Just my guess that Airbus is going under. The plane is late, overweight, fuel inefficient, too big, there aren't enough orders, and Boeing has been cleaning their clock.

[Brian Allen]

<< .... "Europe's answer" to Boeing and, until recently, a shiningly successful example of ...... the many billions of pounds sunk into this grand (Wank) .... >>

By the corrupt little men who squander the confiscated wealth of the collectivized citizens of Britain, France, Germany and Spain -- and of several of the other squalidly socialistic satellite states of the Euro-peons' Neo-Soviet.

[knews_hound]

A bunch of Euro Socialists that cannot seem to run a profitable buisness?

A Euro "Company" that survives by fleecing the taxpayers?

You could have knocked me over with a feather.

I have never heard of such a thing before.

You learn something every day I tell you.

Cheers,

knewshound

http://www.knewshound.blogspot.com/

[Paul Ross]

A bunch of Euro Socialists that cannot seem to run a profitable buisness?

Any wonder why unfair development no-risk "loans" are such a contentious issue? If you owned a company, wouldn't you like to get a hold of a sub-market interest rate long term loan which you don't have to pay back until you begin to rake in profits from that product? If you never profit from it, then you never have to pay it back. And, don't forget, they haven't even decided how to do...or when... the accounting to determine when you start to make a profit from that product! You don't suppose there's any temptation to cook the books?

[BfloGuy]

If Airbus collapsed entirely (not likely,) Brasil's Embraer and Canada's Bombardier are poised to enter the big-plane market.

They're both building aircraft in the 100 passenger range now and, I'd guess, are just waiting to see what happens with the European elephant before making the move into wide-bodies.

Boeing should be so lucky as to have a monopoly. The Chicoms and the Russkies aren't out of the game either.

[Criminal Number 18F]

Boeing is a monopoly -- thanks to the Clinton Administration's misquided attempt to "rationalize" the aerospace industry.

Airbus is emerging as the opposite pole that markets will always try to create as a counterweight to a monopoly.

The article is insightful. The A380 is a remarkable technical achievement, as remarkable as the 747 and Concorde were in their days. (The 747 was also initially called a market failure by cynical newsmen). But Airbus Industrie is, in the final analysis, a political beast, which imposes terrible inefficiencies. (The example of the internationally perambulating wing sections is just one of hundreds of possible Airbus screwup stories).

Another example of political pressure on the struggling company is the British demand that work on Airbus projects remain in Britain... after the British stake in EADS was sold off. If Daimler Chrysler could find a buyer for their stake on the same terms that BAe got for theirs, they'd be gone, now, too, and Airbus would be in fact what it has always been in perception, a French government enterprise.

While Airbus has a few brickbats coming, Boeing is hardly a knight in shining armour. The US also twists international arms for Boeing... which Boeing repaid by bribing an Air Force official and screwing up tanker procurement for decades. (After that round of Boeing execs departed to retirment and/or jail, the next round included a guy who made everyone in the company sign an "ethics" pledge while he named some floozie he was banging a corporate VP. He's gone, but I believe his Monica remains).

Basically, both of these two corporate giants is too cozy with, and too dependent on, government.

d.o.l.

Criminal Number 18F

[FDNYRHEROES]

...In return for that, Broughton in North Wales and Filton near Bristol get to make the wings. But it also means that each completed set of wings has to make a remarkable journey to the final assembly site in France by way of container ship, river barge and specially adapted road trailer. With the main fuselage having to travel from Germany and the tailfin from Spain, no wonder M. Streiff thought there was a simpler way.

I saw some documentary on how all this stuff had to move to get assembled in France...Ill-concieved foolish and unnecessary choke points... definitely not a good choice for large scale volume of transportation movements should the plane ever go into full production... terrorists could stop that production real easy...I saw the folly in the whole deal right then.

[Paleo Conservative]

I would have posted a ping yesterday if someone had pinged me.

If you want on or off my aerospace ping list, please contact me by Freep mail.

[Paleo Conservative]

Still, the plane looked the part, and the French President, Jacques Chirac, could scarcely contain his Gallic pride. Flanked by Tony Blair and his German and Spanish counterparts, he said Airbus should become the template for all future European industrial collaboration. After hubris like that, nemesis had to follow. And so it has.

LOL!

[COEXERJ145]

Now, now, don't be dissing the Concorde. Despite it's economic failure, it was a technological success. Most people here like to bash the Euros but Concorde isn't something we should be making fun of, especially its only accident.

[antiRepublicrat]

While the loans are technically "repayable" for the record...they aren't being repaid.

Airbus only repays if there's enough profit from the plane, which means that Airbus has no incentive to actually make a profit.

[Lx]

Man those pictures vividly remind me of that day. I'd just had surgery and the only thing to do was watch TV. Seeing that unfold was horrible. You just knew seeing the pictures that there weren't any survivors plus you knew there had to be deaths on the ground. It was just a horrible situation any way you looked at it. Seeing those pictures and knowing that they are all going to die is still very sobering.

The Concorde may not have been a commercial success but it was a beautiful plane and a technological marvel. If it weren't for the envirowhackos, it might have had a chance.

[phantomworker]

Is that an A380 fuselage with Santa head gear?

Or the tail section with Santa pants? :)

[zipper]

The American mail company FedEx has become the first launch customer to cancel its order for 10 freighter versions of the aircraft...

Ha! The irony...

Fred Smith Honored By French-American Chamber of Commerce

---

On November 14, the French-American Chamber of Commerce (FACC) honored Fred Smith as "Person of the Year" at an evening gala event in New York.  The honor recognized the contribution Mr. Smith and FedEx have made and continue to make to the economic relationship between France and the U.S. through the leadership and international strategy of FedEx.  Mr. Smith was the first American to receive the honor in seven years and only the ninth American to receive the honor in its 23-year history.

"Fred Smith, through his vision of the world, has created a global enterprise that has transformed the logistics and transportation industry and accelerated economic activity in dozens of countries," said Serge Bellanger, president of the FACC....

http://www.investinfrance.org/NorthAmerica/Newsroom/News/?p=news&id=2006-11-15&l=en

[Fierce Allegiance]

About a year & a half ago, i bet someone the A380 would be way behing schedule. This was about 3 months before the failed wing test, IIRC.

I wish I could remeber who, and on what thread. They owe me cash! (i think it was a quarter).