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A little A350 Flashback. I dare you not to laugh as you read this. I love the part that says, "The A380 confirms Airbus' status as "one of the most beautiful pages in the book of French and European industrial history,"

Airbus launches production of A380
Toulouse: Airbus on Friday officially launched production of its A380, the biggest ever commercial airliner, stepping up its challenge to Boeing which has staked its future on a new mid-sized jet. During a ceremony attended by French Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin, Airbus unveiled the first fuselage at its new $435 million assembly plant near the southern city of Toulouse. The 545-acre site will receive sections of the aircraft built by Airbus workers in France, Germany, the UK and Spain and transported to Toulouse on specially constructed ships, river barges and trucks. The A380 confirms Airbus' status as "one of the most beautiful pages in the book of French and European industrial history," Raffarin told about 3,000 assembled VIP guests and Airbus workers. Company executives said a combination of limited global runway capacities and steady growth in demand for air travel promised a rosy future for the A380. The 555-seat A380 will carry more passengers than the industry's current largest commercial aircraft, the Boeing 747, making better use of precious takeoff and landing slots as well as fuel, flight crew and other resources when it enters service for Singapore Airlines in 2006. The A380 carries a price tag of $280 million. Apart from the first fuselage--to be used exclusively for ground-based testing--the first complete A380 is set to roll off the assembly line in July. Airbus senior vice president Gerard Blanc claimed that the A380 programme had "petrified" Boeing. "They tried to react, but they couldn't," he said. As Airbus was firming up the launch of the A380 programme in 2000, garnering pledges from airlines to buy the aircraft, Boeing had yet to decide on its broader civil aviation strategy. Boeing twice announced and then scrapped plans for new aircraft--first the 747X, and later an elaborate supersonic high-altitude jet, the Sonic Cruiser. It eventually settled for the 7E7, a fuel-efficient mid-sized jet whose launch was confirmed a week ago with a 50-aircraft order from All Nippon Airways. The aircraft is not expected to enter service before 2008 and will accommodate about 200-300 passengers. Boeing hopes the future of air travel lies in direct point-to-point services, as traffic grows and customers increasingly spurn the time-consuming detours and changeovers caused by airlines channeling passengers through hub airports on their way to their ultimate destinations. Airbus, on the other hand, is betting that the hub-and-spoke network model still has a long and happy future. Executive vice president Charles Champion said Friday that almost all of the 11 airlines that have so far placed 129 firm orders for the A380 plan to use the aircraft only on major hub-to-hub routes. Among A380 customers are Air France, Lufthansa, Malaysia Airlines, Virgin Atlantic Airways and Qantas. Champion also made it clear that Airbus has designs on the Japanese market, traditionally loyal to Boeing. Airbus has given Japanese companies a sizeable chunk of the A380 work. "We've established a strong footprint in Japan with the A380," he said. "Now the challenge for us is to materialize that footprint into market share." Champion reiterated Airbus' goal of adding one new A380 customer on average every year as it moves toward the 250 sales needed to break even. But he played down the importance of achieving that ambition this year. With a "hefty order book" to work on, he said, "the issue today is to find (production) slots for our customers rather than to find new customers for open slots."
The Air Letter Edition: 15486 Date: 11 May, 2004