By Max Kingsley-Jones in London
The UK was involved in the Airbus programme at a national level from day one as a leading proponent in the efforts to set up a pan-European collaborative civil airliner venture. So why did the UK end up as a minority stakeholder in today’s Airbus as the country’s national aerospace company prepares to extinguish the last embers of a nation’s once proud involvement in the civil aircraft business?
The UK was a pioneer of post-war airliner development – famously it was Englishman Frank Whittle who invented the jet engine and a UK aircraft manufacturer, de Havilland, which used that technology to create the world’s first production jet airliner, the DH106 Comet of 1949. A little less than 20 years later it was de Havilland’s successor – Hawker Siddeley Aviation (HSA) – that kept the UK’s foot in the Airbus door as a private subcontractor when the Franco/German consortium was created in 1970, after the UK government decided not to participate as a national stakeholder.
During the mid-1960s, while British Aircraft Corporation (BAC) was busying itself along with Toulouse-based Sud Aviation completing the design of Concorde, the world’s first supersonic transport, HSA was working with two other French constructors, Breguet and Nord, to meet a growing requirement from European airlines, including the UK’s state-owned short-haul carrier BEA, for a high-capacity, short-haul aircraft, or “air bus”. By the end of 1965 these studies had crystalised into a 225- to 260-seat widebody twinjet dubbed the HBN 100, which bore more than a passing resemblance to what eventually became the A300, but with a nose shape derived from the Hawker Siddeley Trident.
As the studies became more serious, Sud Aviation – which had been studying its own widebody twinjet, the “Galion” – joined along with a grouping representing the German manufacturers, and the project was dubbed the “A300”. With power to be provided by UK-built Rolls-Royce RB207 engines, Sud was given design leadership on the airframe as an offset (The design was later scaled down and based around a smaller powerplant, with the R-R RB211, General Electric CF6 and Pratt & Whitney JT9D being candidates).
By early 1969, the UK was less enthusiastic about the prospects for the “big twin” and in April that year the government formally announced the UK’s withdrawal from the programme. Undeterred, the French and Germans went ahead and created Airbus Industrie – it was established as a “GIE” consortium under French law in December 1970 – and set about building the first product, the 250-seat, CF6-powered A300B. Assembled in Toulouse, the A300B entered service with Air France in 1974, by which time Spain’s CASA had also become a minority partner with a 4.2% stake.
Despite the UK’s decision to pull out as a shareholder, HSA was still involved as a subcontractor, undertaking design of the A300’s wings at Hatfield, with assembly at Chester (since rebranded Broughton for political reasons).
HSA’s participation kept the door open to a full return of the UK aerospace industry in 1979 when the newly created British Aerospace (formed in 1977 through the merger of HSA, BAC and Scottish Aviation, but still a nationalised company) was looking for a “big ticket” civil airliner project.
But BAe’s stakeholding in Airbus was not a formality. Despite BEA having being been one of the original proponents of the “air bus” concept, the airline’s 1970s’ successor British Airways was far more smitten with US airliners than those being produced in Toulouse. It would not order an Airbus aircraft in its own right until 1998.
While BAe was pondering its move, BA was finalising its long-term, short-haul fleet-renewal plan, which centred around the Boeing 737 and the new 757. As BAe weighed up an alignment with Europe’s manufacturers, Boeing offered tempting production subcontracts on its new airliner programme but, significantly, not the intellectual participation involving a design role that the Airbus option brought for future programmes, starting with the A310.
And so in 1979 BAe became a 20% stakeholder in Airbus, with the business headquartered at Filton near Bristol, where until recently Concorde production had been undertaken. The share BAe took equated to the wing design and build-work package that HSA had held for a decade.
Between 1981 and 1985 BAe was progressively privatised, and during this time design work on the wing for the first Airbus narrowbody, the A320, was undertaken by engineers at Filton and at the former BAC plant at Brooklands near Weybridge. BAe went on to become the centre of excellence for Airbus wing design and manufacture, with the former being undertaken primarily at Filton and the latter continuing at Broughton.
As part of the preparation for the eventual integration of Airbus, in the late 1990s BAe hived off the Airbus business in to a separate unit – Airbus UK. In 2001, as Airbus prepared to begin its fourth decade as an aircraft manufacturer, the organisation re-invented itself as an integrated company with EADS – created through the merger of French, German and Spanish aerospace concerns – holding an 80% share, and with the remainder held by BAE Systems (itself created in 1999 by the merger of British Aerospace and Marconi Electronic Systems).
To effect the integration, the various factories and their employees in the four member states that were dedicated to Airbus work were sliced off and taken under the wing of the new organisation – including the two BAE factories at Broughton and Filton. The new “Airbus SAS” that emerged from the integration effort was a single company controlling 16 dedicated factories across France, Germany, Spain and the UK that today employs 55,000 people (including staff at the central entity in the Toulouse headquarters). Of these, 10,000 people (or 18% of the total), are directly employed by Airbus UK.
So after 36 years involvement in the programme by BAE and its forebears, the UK is looking to leave Airbus with the sale of its stake to EADS as it focuses on the defence sector and eyes acquisitions across the Atlantic.
Source: Flight International
