Airbus was set up as a loose confederation of European manufacturers: they own the factories which make the airliners which Airbus sells. That hampers Airbus in its efforts to compete with giants like Boeing, and it has long been recognised that it must transform itself from a Groupement d'Interet Economique into a single company. The partners have made public pronouncements on this move, and set a timetable for its implementation. The trouble is, that is not happening.
There is now a very public row between members of the Airbus supervisory board, centring on what have always been seen as the sticking points in turning Airbus into a single corporate entity - which assets will the present partners transfer into that new company, and where will future Airbus work be carried out.
It makes sense that the factories and design offices in France, Germany, Spain and the UK which are dedicated (or largely dedicated) to Airbus work should form the core of the assets to be transferred to the new company. It also makes sense that it should be the new company which makes decisions on which of those factories or design offices should undertake particular work or, indeed, which work it should place with organisations outside the present commercial and geographical structure of Airbus.
Commercial sense that may be, but it does not necessarily make political sense to governments and companies whose factories could stand to lose work as a result. The economic and industrial conditions prevailing when Airbus was assembled as the only practical option for preserving and rebuilding a competitive European airliner industry were very different from those of today. Europe was far less harmonised; the US industry was far less united; world trade was far less global in outlook. The quick fix of allocating workshare on national rather than industrial lines allowed Airbus to get off the ground, but it left Airbus with a legacy of industrial illogic which a single company will almost certainly want to alter drastically over time.
While some partners accept that this is the only logical basis on which to advance, others do not, seeming to be stuck in the idealogical rut of trying to preserve at all costs national shares.
The whole point of consolidating the European airliner business has to be that Airbus becomes a stronger, more profitable enterprise. The partner companies - which will be shareholders in the new Airbus - stand to profit more from owning a profitable company, wherever it does its business, than from trying to preserve their own little fiefdoms and local profits under Airbus' wing.
All of the partners have legitimate concerns about preserving also their individual (and Europe's collective) areas of expertise within the overall European airliner design-and-build capability. Just as they have had to come to terms with the fact they could not all remain airliner final assemblers but should concentrate that expertise in a few centres of excellence, so must they also accept that their own national specialisations may have to be consolidated within Europe for the common good.
In this, they cannot and must not try to pretend that the intellectual property in some of those specialisations can be considered separately from the factories which bring that intellectual property to commercial realisation when agreeing the value of the assets to be transferred in assembling the new Airbus company. The know-how which goes into building an Airbus is as central to the success of the venture as is the office or plant in which the work is done or the machinery on which it is done. It should not be traded or valued separately from the project it belongs to.
Working together, Airbus style, means much more than just all pointing towards the same goal - it means doing so without reservation or thought for individual benefit.o
"Working together, Airbus style, means much more than just all pointing towards the same goal."
Source: Flight International
