ATW Daily News

Airbus: 'We know how to build' the A380

Friday May 16, 2008

Airbus CEO Tom Enders and Executive VP Mario Heinen, head of the A380 program, insisted that delivery delays announced this week resulted from the "snowball effect" of previous A380 production holdups and are not a harbinger of further difficulties.

The A380 program is "stabilizing," they insisted at the manufacturer's annual Technical Press Briefing in Toulouse. Enders said the first four A380s now in service with Singapore Airlines have "delivered unprecedented levels of operational maturity and performance," demonstrating that "we know how to build the plane." Airbus revealed earlier this week that its planned production ramp-up "is not fully achievable" and that it expects to deliver 12 aircraft rather than 13 this year, 21 instead of 25 in 2009 and as few as 30 in 2010 instead of 42 (ATWOnline, May 14).

The principal reason for this fourth program delay is that the company was unable to transition key personnel and resources quickly from the "Wave 1" aircraft (those assembled during "low rate individual production" following the wiring redesign) to those constructed in the "full serial design and manufacturing process" or Wave 2.

"To build one aircraft in two years is one thing, but to double that, then double it again [proved problematic]," Enders said, explaining that expert engineers and "certain processes" were required longer than anticipated in Wave 1, resulting in a "knock-on effect" that slowed Wave 2.

The dearth of qualified technical staff was a critical factor. "We had to learn it the hard way," Enders said. "There was no way we could recruit skilled resources in the quantity we needed" to ramp up production as planned. There was "a lack of qualified people for very demanding jobs," he noted. He said that while Airbus is committed to recruiting and training in the long term, "we have to fix our short-term gaps as quickly as possible. . .We're not thinking recruitment in India and China will solve A380 problems."

The program, however, finally is in a sound position, they claimed. "This is not a replay of summer/fall 2006. This is not square one," Enders insisted. Heinen recalled that Airbus had to "start from scratch" following the wiring difficulties of 18 months ago but that "we now know what we are doing." Establishing the processes to install the new wiring configurations and set up mass production has taken 15 months rather than 12, and each A380 beyond the next few to be delivered will be delayed by an average of three months as a result.

COO-Customers John Leahy said airlines awaiting A380 deliveries "get mad, but they don't cancel the aircraft. They want this aircraft. They know they need it."

by Brian Straus

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