Pratt & Witney Bid Appears To Hit Bias (Europeans Veto $3.6B contract to US firm)

bring it on...

P&W's bid is no good because it does not include money for the bribes and payoffs that Eurinals always require. They will claim it is because they are hurt/insulted by America's position on Iraq, but, it is purely the absence of big bribes for the Eurinal decision-makers.

French President Jacques Chirac was widely quoted last week as saying he would accept only a European engine.

Next time Europe gets into a scrape, I say we give arms to the opponent. This is a fine time for Russia to get some warn seacoast.

Can't we bring in the WTO against them and argue that this is a "subsidy?"

EADS opts for European engine supplier over North American rival

PARIS, May 6 (AFP) - 19:17 GMT - The European aerospace company EADS opted Tuesday for a European-made engine for the Airbus A400M military transport plane after the four-member EuroProp International consortium agreed to lower its price.

An EADS statement said the firm's board of directors was unanimous in its decision "in light of a substantial effort" to make the price more attractive.

Press reports here earlier in the day said EADS, which owns 80 percent of Airbus, had decided to award the engine contract to EuroProp International (EPI) after the group cut its price to compete with Pratt and Whitney Canada.

EuroProp groups the French state-owned engine maker Snecma, Rolls Royce of Britain, MTU of Germany and ITP of Spain.

Both EuroProp and Pratt and Whitney had submitted "excellent proposals," EADS chairman Manfred Bischoff said in the statement.

"However, we have decided to opt in favor of the engine supplied by the European consortium as presenting overall the best solution and in light of a substantial effort on the agreed upon price."

The statement said the EADS board of directors had approved a recommendation from Airbus in favor of the TP400-D6 engine of the European consortium "as the best solution to the needs of the clients of the military transport plane A400M."

EADS directors convened in Amsterdam on Tuesday afternoon following a shareholders' meeting there to study the two proposals.

With 180 orders already on the Airbus books, the A400M is due to meet Europe's military airlift needs from its scheduled launch in 2009. The contract to supply its engines was seen as strategically important to the European aerospace industry.

As the original contract deadline passed last week, Airbus chief executive Noel Forgeard said that unless the European engine makers lowered their price, his first choice would be Pratt and Whitney, whose initial bid was almost 20 percent lower than EPI's.

"As of today Pratt and Whitney is the winner without doubt," Forgeard told reporters last Wednesday.

But he added that "a much lower offer could make us change our minds."

Forgeard also made clear that that a decision to give EPI more time to revise its bid had been taken because of the strong "political dimension" of the contract award.

EADS and Airbus are reported to have come under strong pressure from European governments led by France -- which owns Snecma as well as a 0.06-percent share in EADS -- to choose EPI over its North American rival.

But the French defense ministry insisted there had been no political interference in the contract decision and stressed that Airbus should be the "main judge" of the merits of the rival bids

The French daily Le Monde said earlier Tuesday that EPI had submitted a revised bid, reducing its price by 20 percent and effectively closing the gap with Pratt and Whitney.

But Le Figaro reported that that EPI had cut its price by just 10 percent.

Forgeard last week said Pratt and Whitney had proposed a price of two billion dollars (1.75 billion euros) for its engines. The unit price of the A400M transporter stood at about 85 million euros as of June 2001.

Purchasing contracts for the aircraft are expected to be ratified in the coming weeks. To date, Germany has ordered 60 planes, France 50, Spain 27, Britain 25, Turkey 10, Belgium seven and Luxembourg one.

Extending the deadline for a subsidize govt contract, wheres the WTO in this?

The majors can stop buying Airbus.

LOL!

Despite submitting a bid nearly 20 percent lower than that of its European rivals,

So they want to pay more than required, looking out for the European taxpayers I see. With procurement procedures like this I can only imagine the EU Defense forces being outfitted in French products, all of which will turn YELLOW almost immediately.

The majors can stop buying Airbus.

And we can stop buying ANYTHING made in Europe.

Good bye NATO.

Hey, I love JetBlue. But I think they better start rethinking their AirBus purchase. I'm not gonna get on an airbus again. Don't really like them anyway.

This is cutting off one's nose to spite one's face. 2.6 billion wasted from defense budgets,that are low anyway. Europe is so gone.

Who was it on here the other day that said we should worry about an emerging Franco-Prussian-Russian alliance?

This really ticks me off to see this, and then to think back when the EU wouldn't let the General Electric-Honeywell merger go through. The USA should tell the EU were to shove it the next time they try to stop a merger, especially between two American companies. This is about the most crooked deal I have ever seen, the EU and the WTO are a complete sham out to destroy the proper way to conduct bussiness in the world. I always believed the low bidder with the best reputation was the winer.

This just goes to show that the French are very poor losers. In the final outcome of this deal, the people of the EU will be the losers of this crooked deal. The people of the USA must unite and let the EU and especially the French know that two can play this game.