I don't think I'd want to smell trees when inside an Airbus aircraft.
Posted on 06/23/2006 1:01:57 PM PDT by Red Badger
Airbus has increased the sale price of its A380 superjumbo, whose problems have triggered a management crisis at parent company EADS.
Airbus said the price of all its models - including the A380 - rose two weeks ago in a standard annual increase.
The disclosure of a six-month delay to delivery of the A380 has thrown its Franco-German parent firm into turmoil.
The French government, a major investor in EADS, is under pressure to force management changes at the firm.
'Normal move'
French finance minister Thierry Breton has met with senior managers and is expected to put forward measures to rebuild confidence in the company within days.
According to the Financial Times Deutschland, the list price of the A380 - which will become world's largest airliner - rose by 4.7% to between 235.4m euros ($295.6m; £161.9m) and 251.6m euros ($316m; £173.1m) earlier this month.
The situation must be improved Michele Alliot-Marie, French defence minister
An Airbus spokesman confirmed that the price of all its models had risen but declined to comment on individual figures.
The increases were in no way connected to the costly delays to the A380, he stressed.
"Like every industry, we raise our list prices each year," he said.
Forced to scale back its A380 delivery targets for the next three years, Airbus is set to lose 2bn euros in earnings.
It is also likely to face compensation claims from airlines having to wait longer for the new aircraft.
Under-fire
Senior executives have been severely criticised for their handling of the A380's problems and the way they communicated the news to investors.
Noel Forgeard, one of EADS' two co-chief executives, is under added pressure after selling share options in March weeks before the production problems first came to light.
He has denied any wrongdoing but financial regulators are investigating movement in EADS shares in recent months.
Amid calls for the French government to increase its role in EADS, defence minister Michele Alliot-Marie said investors needed to address the firm's "structural problems".
The firm's dual management structure - consisting of two chief executives and two chairmen representing German and French interests - has been criticised as unwieldy.
"The situation must be improved," she said. "It is incontestable."
The Bristol Brabazon, it failed because BOAC (British Overseas Airways Corporation)regarded air travel as an ordeal and demanded that each passenger be provided with 200 cu. feet for comfort, and 270 cu. ft. for luxury.Thats a New York loft.
Unreal Aircraft.com states:-
" An agreement with the airline eventually led to an interior layout housing a forward saloon with six compartments, each for six passengers, and another one for just three; a midships section at higher level above the wing with 38 seats arranged around tables in groups of four, plus a pantry and galley; and a rear saloon with 23 seats in an aft-facing cinema, plus cocktail bar and lounge.
The Brabazon was be one of the first airliners to be pressurised and air conditioned. It was also be a very big, heavy aircraft - weighing nearly 300,000 lb - for only 100 passengers."
I don't think I'd want to smell trees when inside an Airbus aircraft.
A: 400 trees per second.
That reminds me...
|
A'hem...let me suggest one alternative:
Should the A-380 Be Euthanized? as reprinted here:
June 2006 Letter ::Dear Fellow Stunned Observers,
Mapping failure in our industry is easy. Aircraft fail due to technical reasons or market reasons or both. Technical failures include the A-12 and the Comet 1 jetliner. Market failures include the 717, F-20, and Concorde. Finding combinations of both types of failure is rare. Most of these get quashed before they leave the drawing board—like Sonic Cruiser. You need to search history for aircraft that represented both types of failure, like the Spruce Goose.
I’ve always thought the A380 would be a market failure. But we might be witnessing an unusual dual market and technical failure.
What’s bizarre about the recent Airbus A380 announcement is its excuse. “Some wires are tough to install. So production will be cut by 70% next year, and the delays will continue after that.” Damn that Radio Shack. This is the dumbest effort to deflect blame for the disaster (okay, second dumbest; first prize goes to Noël Forgeard’s pinning the blame on Gustave Humbert: “Mon Dieu! Leave the company in this German’s hands for a few months and this happens!”). What to make of all this?
First, no, it’s not just the wiring harnesses. Something looks wrong here. Most likely, they are finishing planes already in production, but making design tweaks for future aircraft, trying to get the weight down and improve performance. The initial planes will likely be overweight.
Second, there’s the market’s comment on this aircraft’s technical appeal. Aircraft delays happen all the time. But if a new plane came with a compelling case, people would wait for it. When people back out, or talk about backing out, that speaks to a serious ambivalence about the plane’s performance. ILFC’s Steve Udvar-Hazy knows more about airline economics and residual values than anyone; if he cancels that’s a serious warning.
I’ll put on my analyst hat and offer some free advice. Airbus and its stakeholders should do a brutally honest assessment of the A380. First, look carefully at the customer contract terms and pricing. Can it ever make money? Can the performance be improved? What will the penalty payments look like for missed performance promises and for late delivery? If the next few weeks see more than one or two customers cancel, that’s a good indicator that this plane will just suck cash.
Next, assess company resources. How quickly can money and engineers be shifted from the A380 to the A370? The A380 (along with the 747-8) is chasing 5-10% of the market by value; that middle market widebody segment is 50%. And, if they’re late with the A370, they run the risk of losing the narrowbody franchise, the other 40-45% of the market, to a Boeing 737 replacement. The situation was bad enough before the new delays. The new schedule implies an ongoing ulcer that distracts from the other 90-95% of the market.
In the interests of fairness, here’s some free (and obvious) advice to Boeing: as soon as the 787 is out the door, launch the 797 narrowbody. Do to the A320 what the 777 and 787 are doing to the A330/340.
To sum, if there is no hope of quickly turning the A380 into a competitive plane with decent economics and then shifting design and production resources to more important segments, kill it. The write-offs and political shame will be terrible. But national, continental, and corporate pride should have nothing to with what is essentially a business decision. More importantly, the alternative—to keep going and risk losing everything—is worse. There isn’t a lot of time here, and it’s tough to learn from fatal mistakes.
The A380 problems are much bigger than a big plane. France, Europe, heck, everywhere, needs to look at this experience and learn from it. Many governments monkey around with their nations’ industries. Many allow strategic planning and forecasting to be corrupted by politics. Many fill top industry leadership jobs with incompetent party hacks. All of this is really bad. Period. Separation of government and economy (i.e. capitalism) is a great idea. It means the damage government can do is restricted to the public sector. It’s not just in Europe; clueless officials everywhere spent tens of millions in taxpayer cash on airport upgrades, just to accommodate a marginal requirement.
But old habits die hard. As the A380 news broke, French President Jacques Chirac said he had “total confidence” in the A380 (shades of G.W. Bush and FEMA director Michael Brown; “You’re doing a heckuva job, Forgie…”). Much worse than that, the debate now concerns the French Government taking a much bigger role in EADS/Airbus ownership and management. This would not go over well with the Germans. It would very definitely not go over well with the US Congress, obliterating chances of a tanker contract. It wouldn’t go over well with any capital provider or investor or global markets either.
Sure, major changes are needed at EADS France; but it needs less government control, not more (best recommendation I’ve heard: bring back Jean Pierson, last seen fishing in a boat off Corsica). And in the weirdest twist yet, France’s Socialist party is criticizing the government’s Airbus policy. Of course, we don’t know what they want. It isn’t likely that fans of free enterprise will be in the awkward position of rooting for the Socialists. It’s more likely that the Socialists will use the crisis as a talking point on the evils of a market economy.
I have no idea what will happen in France, but I have a bad feeling about it. It would take years to undo re-nationalization and de-globalization. If the big government crowd succeeds, the petty tyrants in charge of the French economy will one day suffer a “Ceausescu moment”: the sudden realization that the crowd in the square is yelling, not cheering.
Another lesson. The A380 illustrates why risk is spread through outsourcing. For all the talk, the only parts of the A380 that were globalized were the systems (some, thankfully, were off-the-shelf). The airframe itself is basically 100% European. This means an unpleasant level of exposure for Airbus companies, including BAE Systems, which is now trying to extricate itself from Airbus, rather like a fox from a cruel fur hunter’s trap. Contrast this with Boeing’s approach. If the 787 test fuselages start fizzing like Alka Seltzer, Boeing’s total exposure is relatively light. Much of the damage would be spread to Japan, Italy, and Vought. Of course, the European taxpayer politely provides Airbus with some insulation, much as Japanese and Italian taxpayers help insulate Boeing.
I’ll close this note with a defense of Airbus. Despite the industrial malpractice that has brought Airbus to this point, the market doesn’t want a monopoly. Customers will encourage anything Airbus does to reinvent its product line. That’s another reason to think about canceling the A380 and moving on. If Airbus admits defeat with this fratricidal behemoth and turns everything to the A370 and then the A320-X, airlines and lessors might step up to the plate and do what they certainly won’t do with the A380: order planes.
We’ve updated the A380 report this month, along with the Trainer overview, A400M, PC-9/T-6, Tornado, ALH, LCA, and the ATR family. See you at Farnborough.
Yours, ‘Til the Flying Asylum Opens for Business,
Richard Aboulafia
And they bill this plane as being cheaper to operate per seat, i.e., targeted to budget operations. I wonder how well putting 600 seats in the new version C-5 Galaxy would do in that market.
...which will prove a point.
Owwwwwch. That's COLD.
I forgot about Air France's little airshow demonstration gone horribly wrong. It's cruel, but I actually mocked it when my wife and I saw the footage on cable a couple of years ago. I started going off on a riff like I was the A320 fly-by-wire system crossed with HAL from "2001: A Space Odyssey."
"I am going tew land in zee trees, Dave. Dew not trah and stop meh. I dew not zink yew want zee full zhrottle, Dave. I want tew land in zee trees, Dave. Look, Dave. I am zee songbird, landing in zee trees."
Yeah. I'm going to hell for that one.
}:-)4
Dang, there goes my plan to impress the babes with my new A380.
The C-5 would be a lousy passenger plane. It is considerably slower than civilian jet airliners, and it has a lot of dead weight that isn't necessary for passenger service. No airliner needs the extra weight of kneeling landing gear that allows the plane to be lowered so the ramps can allow vehicles to roll off or roll on the cargo deck of the C-5. They don't need the air to air refueling equipment either. Quite frankly lots of military cargo is on pallets that only need to be delivered to air bases that have cargo hanldling equipment, and it's much cheaper to send chartered commercial freighters like 747's and MD-11's than to send C-5's or C-17's. The existing cargo equipment is incompatible with the second main cargo deck of an A380, so the A380 is unlikely to be useful for hauling military cargoes.
If you want on or off my aerospace ping list, please contact me by Freep mail.
"This should be a documentary lesson in How Not to Run a Airplane Company......"
It is a textbook case on how most states are run.
EU isnt very good at this "Capitalism" and "Supply/Demand" things are they?
What is that in the picture, besides soon-to-be-FOD?
(And what's the animal running in front of it?)
}:-)4
This is in response to much higher liability insurance premiums. A crash in this thing can be very costly.
My obligatory airbus signoff: I wouldn't taxi in an Airbus.
Haven't you heard about the story of Airbus A380 that raced a rabbit?
Late, and over budget.
Whatever happened to on time, on target?
I guess that is a distinctly American concept.
**** snicker ****
No. Was it a Jimmy Carter killer rabbit, and if so, did the fly-by-wire system on the A380 shut down and surrender immediately?
}:-)4
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.
