Former Airbus chief Jean Pierson has struck out at the EADS organisational structure, believing the current set up is doomed to fail unless it is changed.
Speaking to French business daily Les Echos yesterday, Pierson – who ran Airbus between 1985 and 1998 - said: “The current set-up is destined for failure. Customers will firstly lose patience and then confidence.”
Pierson is unsurprised by the current deadlock over distribution of work for the A350XWB and the Power8 restructuring plan, criticising Germany’s hunger for workshare and accusing it of using aircraft launches and difficulties to further its own interests.
He says: “I am not familiar with the current cost cutting plan, but I know [Airbus chief executive] Louis Gallois. I do not doubt that this plan will be both serious and reasonable in industrial and social terms and that it will also be balanced.”
He believes the delays to the A380 programme would never have occurred under the original GIE consortium structure which existed before the formation of EADS.
“From the moment when one gives birth to an imbalanced commercial entity, with industrial parity and co-governance, you get what you have today,” he says. “Today you have an unhealthy face-off.”
“This system cannot continue,” he adds. “EADS is a company which is up against the wall. I cannot see who will agree to make concessions. This Franco-German rivalry cannot continue, this environment is noxious and the system ungovernable.”
Pierson says there are only two options going forward for the manufacturer. He suggests either backtracking to the previous structure with co-operation between independent companies or a dilution of shareholdings and the exit of Lagardère and DaimlerChrysler, bringing it in line with BAE Systems or Boeing.
Source: FlightGlobal.com
