Airbus Industrie

▪ European consortium

 European aircraft-manufacturing consortium formed in 1970 to fill a market niche for short- to medium-range, high-capacity jetliners and to compete with long-established American manufacturers. Full members include the German-French-Spanish-owned European Aeronautic Defence and Space Company (EADS), with an 80 percent interest, and Britain's BAE Systems, with 20 percent. Belgium's Belairbus and Italy's Alenia are risk-sharing associate members in selected programs. Headquarters are near Toulouse, France.

 At the start of the 21st century, Airbus's 46 percent market share made it the world's second largest maker of commercial aircraft ( Boeing Company led the industry). About 42,000 employees of the partner companies worked directly on Airbus aircraft in France, Germany, Spain, and the United Kingdom. The consortium has more than 1,500 suppliers and holds cooperative agreements with numerous companies around the world. American companies are responsible for about a third of Airbus components. The partner companies perform much of the subassembly in their own factories. A fleet of special transport aircraft (the Airbus Super Transporter Beluga, based on the A300-600 passenger aircraft) is used to airlift the subassemblies to one of two final assembly lines in France and Germany. The Airbus A300/A310 and A330/A340 aircraft families and the A320 aircraft are completed at a complex near Toulouse, while the A318, A319, and A321 aircraft are assembled in Hamburg.

      The Airbus program began in 1965 when the governments of France and Germany initiated discussions about forming a consortium to build a European high-capacity, short-haul jet transport. The following year French, German, and British officials announced that Sud Aviation (France), Arge Airbus (an informal group of German aerospace companies), and Hawker Siddeley Aviation (Britain) would study the development of a 300-seat airliner for the short-haul sector. Because engines meeting the Airbus requirements did not materialize, the initial design, designated the A300, was scaled to a 250-seat version.

      In 1969 the British government dropped out of the program, but France and Germany signed formal articles to proceed to the construction phase. Hawker Siddeley, responsible for the aircraft's wing, remained a subcontractor. Airbus Industrie management company was set up in 1970 as a Groupement d'Intérêt Economique (GIE; “Grouping of Mutual Economic Interest”), a unique form of partnership instituted in French law in 1967. Originally, 50 percent of the funding came from France's Aerospatiale (later Aerospatiale Matra), created by the merger of Sud Aviation with Nord Aviation and the French missile maker SEREB, and 50 percent came from Germany's Deutsche Airbus (later DaimlerChrysler Aerospace Airbus), a joint venture in which Messerschmitt-Bölkow-Blohm had a 65 percent stake and VFW-Fokker a 35 percent stake. Spain's Construcciones Aeronáuticas S.A. (CASA) joined in 1971 with a 4.2 percent share. Hawker Siddeley and other British companies were nationalized in 1977 into a single government conglomerate, British Aerospace (later BAE Systems), which joined Airbus as a true partner with a 20 percent share in 1979. In 2000 all the partners except BAE Systems merged into EADS (European Aeronautic Defence and Space Company), which thus acquired an 80 percent share of Airbus. The next year the GIE was replaced by a single private enterprise.

      The A300 was developed to fill the market niche for a short- to medium-range, high-capacity aircraft. It was the first wide-body jetliner to be equipped with only two engines for better operating economics. The A300 prototype made its first flight in 1972, and the aircraft entered commercial service with Air France in 1974. Despite its excellent performance, the A300 initially sold poorly because of airlines' concerns about its new and unproven manufacturer. A breakthrough occurred in 1977 when the U.S. carrier Eastern Air Lines (Eastern Air Lines, Inc.) entered into a leasing arrangement for the aircraft. A second boost for Airbus came in 1978, when it launched a program to develop a smaller-capacity, medium-range plane. That aircraft, the A310, first flew in 1982 and entered service three years later. With the addition of the A310 to its product line, Airbus Industrie was able to offer to operators the advantages and savings of an aircraft family—for example, similarity of flight decks, commonality of parts, and a range of sizes that allow the aircraft to be optimized to the routes for which they are best suited.

      Airbus's A320, whose program was launched in 1984, was designed as a narrow-body, short- to medium-range aircraft that incorporated numerous technical innovations, most notably fly-by-wire (electric rather than mechanically linked), computer-based flight controls. The A320 entered revenue service in 1988. Due to its great success, the consortium developed that jetliner into a family by lengthening the fuselage to create the A321 and shortening it once to create the A319 and a second time to create the A318. In 1987 Airbus launched two aircraft as a single program to extend its product line to the long-range airliner segment. The four-engine A340 entered service in 1993, and the smaller twin-engine A330 followed a year later.

 In the early years of Airbus, the governments of member countries provided program-launch aid in the form of repayable loans for the research and development work of each new aircraft. The fraction of the cost carried by governments was gradually reduced, and, starting with the development of the A321 in 1989, Airbus projects were financed completely by internally generated cash flow and external commercial sources. In 1997, following the lead of Boeing, Airbus expanded into the business jet market by launching a program for the Airbus Corporate Jetliner, based on the A319 aircraft. Two years later Airbus Military Company was formed as a sudsidiary to develop a military transport, named the A400M. In 2007 Airbus launched the A380, the world's largest airliner, with a standard seating of 555 and a maximum capacity of 853 in an all-economy class configuration.

Stanley I. Weiss Amir R. Amir

 

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