A year ago, Airbus’s widebody strategy looked ragged at best. At one end of its offering, the A330 was a two-decade-old programme with a depleting backlog (its thirsty A340 sibling having already been killed off). At the other, the A380 was struggling to expand its appeal beyond Emirates. In the middle, Toulouse’s great hope was the A350. But while the -900 variant was selling well, the smaller -800 looked doomed.
As 2015 begins, things appear tidier. Despite last-minute fussing from launch customer Qatar Airways, the first A350-900 was handed over just before Christmas, a week ahead of Airbus’s year-end delivery deadline. The type has a healthy orderbook and the airframer is confident of meeting an ambitious production ramp-up. Meanwhile, the launch of the re-engined A330neo at Farnborough in July gave Airbus a credible contender in the sub-300-seat segment, where Boeing’s 787 had the market virtually to itself.
But dark clouds remain. An admission from Airbus’s chief beancounter in December that the A380 – Europe’s most ambitious airliner programme since Concorde – would scarcely be making a profit by the end of the decade, and that halting production was an option, made investors shudder.
Despite a three-year head start in terms of availability, the largest A350, the -1000, is being comfortably outsold by Boeing’s 777X, whose variants offer either more capacity or longer range.
While the next few years will be about delivery – bringing the A350-1000, A330neo and A320neo into service and ramping-up both narrowbody and widebody production – Airbus does face big decisions before the decade is out. Should it risk billions revamping a product, the A380, of which the airline industry is far from convinced? (When Boeing launched the 777X it was refreshing the most successful long-haul aircraft ever). Should it consider an all-new small widebody, or focus instead in the 2020s on a clean-sheet single-aisle design, perhaps with Rolls-Royce?
These are choices a new generation of Airbus senior managers may have to take. Now that the company is largely freed from the governmental shackles that restricted its ability to manoeuvre during the EADS era, it will be largely institutional shareholders they will have to convince of the merits of any major decisions.
One thing is sure: there can be no vainglorious grand projets. Airbus will have to make sure the business case for any new programme proposal is absolutely tight.
Source: Flight International
