The air transport market is coming back in a big way – so now we need Airbus and Boeing to provide the leadership to meet demand
What a week! Not since the days before the outrage of 9/11 has the air transport industry seen so much action in such a short time.
Last Wednesday the Airbus A380 took flawlessly to the air before an astonishing 40,000 members of the French public at the airport alone and toasted with several thousand litres of vin rouge.
You could tell it was going to fly on Wednesday. On Monday Boeing announced a deal for up to 96 widebodies at Air Canada. On Tuesday morning Air India's decision to take another 50 Boeings mysteriously emerged, and on Tuesday afternoon a host of new details of the 787 were made public.
Let's charitably attribute to coincidence Wednesday's release of Boeing's first quarter results while the A380 was actually airborne. Regardless, the public relations strategy behind all this was not exactly subtle.
However farcical the circumstances of Harry Stonecipher's removal from the chairmanship of Boeing, there is no doubt that his gloves-off attitude to opponents rubbed off on the team he led while in office.
All in all, for an industry somewhat prone to self-congratulation, a little party-throwing on both sides of the Atlantic – and elsewhere – really was justified.
But these are unstable times for the industry's twin colossuses and the world now looks to them for leadership.
Which is unfortunate timing, because after a sequence of events that almost defies credulity, they are both looking for leadership themselves – and in both cases for reasons quintessentially related to their national roots.
In the USA, Stonecipher fell victim to the prissiness infecting American public and corporate life that is looked at aghast by most Europeans.
In Europe, however, Franco-German chickens hatched at the time of EADS's creation are coming noisily home to roost, leaving Airbus chief executive Noel Forgeard without an heir as he prepares to move to EADS itself.
The result is that just at the time when both Airbus and Boeing desperately need inspirational leadership, their upper ranks are instead in disarray and replete with colleagues who have an eye on the top jobs.
For major corporations there is no avoiding the trauma of high-level succession from time to time, but it is a measure of their competence that they preserve their operations from the inevitable internal tremors.
In fact, despite its self-inflicted wound, it is Boeing's board that is now showing some skill at restoring stability, while EADS shareholders must be horrified by the corporate and inter-governmental manoeuvrings that continue to plague the company this year.
Crucially, this is all deeply worrying not just to the two entities immediately affected, but also to the rest of the industry and its customers. With the pair's domination of the business comes responsibility on an epic scale.
For years their own price wars have borne heavily on their suppliers, who have been asked to work harder, smarter and for greater risk. Financially stressed airline customers depend utterly on timely deliveries of reliable, safe aircraft. And millions of people worldwide have livelihoods and businesses that rely on robust air transport.
Instead we see two headless giants mindlessly threatening each other with action that would end before the World Trade Organisation (WTO), a proposition that European trade commissioner Peter Mandelson last week rightly condemned as "a pointless and wasteful exercise".
Airbus is doubtless more vulnerable to this sort of distraction at present as it sets about simultaneously keeping the A380 programme on track for its ferociously demanding schedule and tries to fight back against the 787 from, frankly, a position of some weakness.
But Boeing's early sales success with the 787 – an aircraft which, like the A380, is a technically aggressive machine – now means it too has to deliver on its ambitious promises to customers.
And all of this while the industry at large confronts macro-threats, such as airport capacity and environmental concerns that require a co-ordinated response.
We all need these two world-class entities to get their houses back in order and focus on business. Stepping back from the WTO brink would be a good start.
Source: Flight International
