How long before AirBus is no more????
 

One mistake after another continues to plague AirBus. Today, FedEx cancelled its A380 order (link) that had a list price of $2.3 billion and will instead buy 15 Boeing 777s with a list price of $3.6 billion. If they were not funded by government subsidies I am sure they would be out of business already.

- 3 delays on the production of the A380 and a 4th is probable.
- The A380 failed its wing stress test causing one of the delays. AirBus says they fixed the problem but are not going to retest the wing. Makes me confident in flying on an A380 - NOT! link
- They have totally screwed up on a plane to compete with Boeing's 787 Dreamliner which continues to get huge orders. link
- Today, a French Court said that AirBus and Air France are liable for damages in a 1992 crash. link
- UPS is still deciding on whether to cancel its order for 10 A380s. link

And if you own Boeing stock it is up over 5% today so far.

Airbus is no more (technically), look for the company officers to start running to Bora Bora with suitcases full of borrowed cash.

Aircraft design and production is NOT an industry where decision by committee will work. Also the French can't even build cars.

Obviously I know nothing about the airline industry, but from what I've been reading, the new Boeing "superplane" is going to kill the Airbus.

Bull, Airbus isn't a solely french company, it's a Euroean company. Last year they sold a considerable amount of airplanes. Once you have flown over a million miles in airliners, like I did, you'd probably pick the quiet Airbuses over a rattling 757 with fucked up AC any day.

Jenny, I assume you are responding to me. First I never criticized any Airbus product. Their current/old products were designed and developed in simpler times.

The problems facing Airbus now will not be worked out and many are betting Airbus will be sold or liquidated. Here is a company owned by different corporations from various countries. Different governments, and Daimler-Chrysler. Their board of directors are French dominated, and serious insider trading lawsuits by shareholders are under investigation.

And don't tell me Daimler executives like being overruled by a country that makes Peugeots ......

Airbus is a victim of many, many problems. One of the major contributors to the problem is that Airbus was created by putting a bunch of companies from different countries together. Each of those countries has needs and desires of a political nature to keep work in their country. As a result, the development and contruction of tha A380 is spread out over a bunch of factories, and the final assembly is done in a place that requires special transport and manipulation of the incoming parts to build the plane - adding huge amounts of expense and complexity.

A recent wiring issue (some of the harnesses don't fit) was tracked down to one of the regional companies using old software to display diagrams, which gave incorrect wire lengths. That alone will cost an almost 1 year delay.

Beyond that, issues of complexity of operations (for anyone who flies, the turbulance wake requirement on these planes is apparently right now at 6 miles for 4000 feet below.. which is a huge hole in the airspace), requiring airports to set up special gates for passenger traffic, and so on have also tagged this plane as a no-go.

The exchange rate differences Euro to american dollar is also a huge influence in all of this, with Boeing getting about a 40% price advantage over the Airbus planes right now.

Companies like Fedex are "on time all the time" types of buisnesses, and considering that Airbus really can't say when the planes would be delivered, it is pretty much a no brainer to go to Boeing and get an assured date. Save money, get it on time, and keep the show on the road. Not a hard choice.

airbus maybe be able to recover if they can just stop promissing the A380 until its 100% ready to go.

Funny.

What was it? A year, maybe two ago that AirBus was being touted as the next latest, and greatest thing? And blah blah fucking blah.

Heh.

im thinking concorde

Squishy, the airplane business is like the construction business - you don't start building until someone has signed up to buy it.

Bombardier in the last two years has been pushing a potential new plane, a 140 seat "very large" variant of it's regional jets (which typically seat up to 100 or so). The idea being to offer a relatively fuel effecient smaller style jet that can pick up the work of older 737s, 727s, and other of the small end of the large jet business. They put together drawings, they put together specs, they got the unions on side, and went out to sell nothing more than an idea.

less than a year later, the plans were scrapped even though it was a good idea - nobody would buy it. They won't build it hoping the market comes to them, they build it because they have orders on the books.

Airbus did the same thing witht he A380, developed it to a point, got people on board signed up, then started to build airplanes. The Fedex deliveries weren't scheduled until 2008 or 2009 anyway... it isn't like they just failed to deliver this week.

The airliner business is very different!

actually i do work for fedex during the day i started in newark nj at the airport in 89' i worked the ramp for 5 years...we actually have a contract with boeing for years but when the airbus came out with the 380 at the time i was the newest an the biggest at the time cause we were trying to phase out our 747s an we got a killer deal now that we have more money from expanding our business fedex ground,freight and cutting our hours(i hate my fucking job) now they can afford the boeings so believe me its not the plane itself

heres what im saying. like any business you dont start selling something that is just an idea on paper. airline business shouldnt be any different and i dont think it is. its proven nearly impossible for this A380 to be built in the time span that people were looking for it to be built. with the A380 and the background information, Airbus sold a design on paper far before they even knew it would work fully. they also sold a delivery date and was unattainable. why did they do this? simple because no one would have ordered had they said, it would be ready int 2010.

overall just a bad business decision by Airbus :2 cents:

Airbus is not going anywhere - the aircraft will be ready when it's ready.

In the meantime there are orders, cancellations and more orders as the production time gets nearer. First deliveries are due to Singapore Airlines in Oct 2007 (assuming no further delays).

Squishy, because of the costs of airliners and the development time, no company will even bend a single piece of aluminum until they have buyers on the hook. During that build time is where Airbus has been finding the issues.

Literally, there was a pile of orders on the book before the first test plane even had it's first flight, and certainly well before any assembly occured.

Without a set delivery date, the airlines won't come on board, as they are planning based on forecast traffic, trends, and required or prefered retirement dates of existing fleet. Airlines need to know anywhere from 1 to 5 years ahead to make thier plans. There is really no way that Airbus could have forseen all the issues, but it isn't unusual for a new plane to have delays.

Fedex is specific case where they have needs and they don't have time to wait - and they are going to get 15 planes instead of 10. Things change.

Webby, don't book your flights yet. Oct 2007 is looking more and more like spring 2008 the way things are going, and with the second head of Airbus out the door in the last 110 days, things haven't settled down.

I didn't, it just irks me sometimes how people jump on anything that's labeled "french" even if it isn't. Probably just because the french weren't stupid enough to get themselves caught up in our war. Some french can be assholes sometimes, but I also have met many nice people there.

As for the "for anyone who flies" -dude. The "turbulance wake" is actually called wake turbulence or, wingtip vortices. They only matter when an aircraft is slow and low, means, right before touch down or right after take off. Hard to believe they draw six miles in vortices. They are not only related to aircraft size, some comparably smaller jets, like the old 727, were known to create nasty wake turbulences.

They are going down for sure....

Hello McFly.

RawAlex just explained to you how the airline business works and why it works that way. And yet you think the system they've been using for years is totally wrong... based on what knowledge?