Information About Airbus

The Toulouse, France-based Airbus SAS, formerly Airbus Industrie, is the manufacturer of military and civilian aircraft originally designed to carry more than 100 passengers on short-run flights. By the mid-1990s it was building aircraft capable of carrying more than 300 passengers on global flights. Since 1974, it has produced 10 different versions of the airbus. By 1999, it had delivered 2,000 aircraft.

Consortium

European aircraft builders wanted to break the dominance of the aircraft industry that U.S.-based aircraft manufacturers held since World War II. Independent European builders considered establishing a consortium to give Europe a passenger airliner capable of carrying the maximum number of passengers possible on short- and medium-routes, in an economic manner.

Airbus Industrie

In 1970, the governments of the United Kingdom, Germany and France established Airbus Industrie. France's Sud Aviation, the United-Kingdom-based Hawker Siddeley and Germany's Arbeitsgemeinschaft Airbus, later to become Deutsche Airbus, made up the consortium. In 1971, the Spain-based Construcciones Aeronáuticas, S.A., or CASA, joined the group.

Division of Labor

Production was divided among the participants, with France responsible for construction of the cockpit, flight control and a portion of the fuselage. Hawker Siddeley built the wings. The German group handled the rear fuselage and upper center section. A Dutch builder constructed the flaps and spoilers. Spain manufactured the horizontal tailplane.

First Airbus

The consortium produced its first airbus, the A300, in 1972 (for Air France) and it went into service two years later. It was a twin-aisle, two-engine aircraft capable of carrying up to 254 passengers. In 1982, Air Algerie received a modified version of the A300, the A310, which carried 187 passengers. The A300 and A310 ceased production in 2007.

Airbus SAS

By the early 1990s, it became apparent that the consortium was an inefficient way to build aircraft and it produced numerous conflicts of interest. It wasn't until 2000 that Airbus Industrie was transformed into a traditional company. DaimlerChrysler Aerospace, which had acquired Deutsche Airbus, Aérospatiale-Matra, which took over Sud Aviation and CASA merged to form the European Aeronautic Defence and Space Company N.V., or EADS.

Debacle

In 2006, Airbus was dealt a blow when it was forced to announce that it had to delay the delivery of the Airbus A380. What leaders of the original consortium feared in the late 1960s and early 70s had become a reality. The French builders were using the latest version of computer design software to build the aircraft while the German manufacturers used an older version. The wiring of the new aircraft had to be redesigned, creating the delay. Stock in Airbus SAS plunged by 25 percent.

Today

Airbus recovered from the delays. In 2007, it company restructured and announced that 10,000 jobs would be slashed through 2011. The EADS-owned Airbus SAS employs about 57,000 workers in France, Germany, United Kingdom, Spain, the United States, Japan and China. In 2007, it produced for Singapore Airlines the A380 4-engine, double-deck airbus with 535 seats.

Resources

• Airbus layoffs