Airbus has good year, looks forward to super jumbo

All at Airbus Industrie - and surely the airline industry in general - are looking with great anticipation towards the new Airbus A380 super jumbo, dubbed the flagship of the 21st century, as the jigsaw puzzle in one of the biggest operations in the industry starts coming together.

Parts of the aircraft will be transported from a number of European countries, where the aircraft fuselage and wings are manufactured, to the new Airbus' assembly facility in Toulouse in what is believed to be one of the biggest logistics operations.

An array of new technologies for materials, processes, systems and engines have been developed, tested and adopted for the A380, which will enter passenger service in 2006.

Each A380 super jumbo will cost $275 million.

But apart from anticipation, Airbus is also looking back, with satisfaction - for 2003 was a landmark year when it became the leader in aircraft sales, overtaking Boeing in the number of deliveries for the first time.

Airbus made a total of 305 deliveries, exceeding its own target of 300. The deliveries represent 52 per cent of the year's total aircraft deliveries and a turnover of €19.3 billion.

Over the last year, Airbus has also registered 284 new firm orders from 24 customers, giving it a 54 per cent market share in the category of aircraft above 100 seats.

The year 2003 was also the one when the Maltese national airline Air Malta decided to chose Airbus to replace its fleet over the next four-and-a-half years.

Media representatives had the opportunity to familiarise themselves with Airbus' facilities at the Toulouse Blagnac airport assembly plant during a visit organised jointly with Air Malta last week.

Journalists had the opportunity of seeing parts of aircraft being assembled.

David Velupillai, regional press manager, who is soon to take up a job with Airbus in Asia, said Airbus already has 129 confirmed orders by 11 operators for the new plane. The first passenger A380 is to be delivered to Singapore Airlines.

Mr Velupillai explained that Airbus was extending the use of carbon fibre reinforced plastics to the A380 which will also be the first Airbus aircraft to boast a carbon fibre centre wingbox, representing a weight-saving of up to one-and-a-half tonnes compared to most advanced aluminium alloys.

The large wings and four new engines will provide better take-off and landing field performance than that of current large aircraft and, therefore, require a shorter runway. The aircraft is also quieter than today's largest aircraft.

Mr Velupillai said it was estimated that air traffic in normal circumstances was experiencing a five per cent annual growth which means that air traffic would double in the next 15 years. The challenge for the air industry was how to cope with such an increase and Airbus' solution was the A380. Boeing does not see eye to eye with Airbus about the need for such a huge aircraft. But time will tell!

My first reaction when entering the Felix Kracht Mock Up centre at the Airbus facility was to ask how this magnificent giant was going to get off the ground.

Its fuselage dwarfs that of other aircraft including the A340 wide bodied plane, which is by no means small. Inside I looked in disbelief at the space, wondering whether I was really standing in an aeroplane.

Maggie Bergsma, the new regional press manager, explained that the A380 passenger version has a maximum take-off weight of 560 tonnes. It has 49 per cent more cabin surface area than the Boeing 747-400 and 35 more seats, resulting in more personal space for the passengers.

The B747-400 has a maximum take-off weight of 412.8 tonnes, 26 per cent less than that of the A380. This clearly shows the benefits of nearly 40 years' advance in technology that is now being applied to the A380, she said.

The A380 family starts from a baseline passenger aircraft with a capacity of 555 passengers in three classes.

Transport of the huge plane sections - which are built at Airbus centres of excellence in the UK, Germany, France and Spain - to the Toulouse A380 assembly facility includes a mix of sea, river, road and air carriage.

A huge roll-on, roll-off sea vessel will be used to take components on the first stage of the journey, as the completed sub-assemblies are too big to be carried by the specially designed Beluga cargo planes that now haul the biggest parts of the other Airbus planes.

The roof of the testing and final assembly building alone weighs five times as much as the Eiffel Tower. The facility, which is nearing completion, is over 50 hectares in size and will comprise mainly the static test building and the final assembly hall, 490 metres long, 250 metres wide and 46 metres high. The hall will accommodate 34,0000 square metres of office space on six levels.

In addition, a new 19,000 square-metre building has been constructed to accommodate the A380 cockpit simulator and the test rig for systems integration, simulation and verification.

Airbus chief executive officer Noel Forgeard said all in all Airbus managed the difficulties of 2003 quite well. It was now in a good position to fully benefit from the market recovery when it came.

For 2004, he expects the market to remain soft with deliveries close to 300.

He said that even as Airbus took the lead in the delivering of about 20 planes more than Boeing last year, there was concern about profitability in view of the value of the dollar against the euro.

The dollar - the currency used in the purchase of aircraft - has fallen 19 per cent against the euro in the past 12 months. While Airbus' aircraft sales are in dollars, half its costs are in euros, so when the dollar drops, Airbus loses margins.

Ms Bergsma said that demand for the A320 family of four aircraft - A318, A319, A320 and A321 - was such that Airbus needed two final assembly facilities, one in Toulouse, for the A320, and another in Hamburg for the other three derivatives.

An Airbus aircraft is 95 per cent complete before it arrives at the final assembly hall.

The two forward fuselage sections are joined in St Nazaire where all the systems are also installed. The five rear fuselage sections are joined together in Hamburg and the systems are also installed there. Wings come complete from Broughton in north Wales and the horizontal stabiliser from Spain.

Airbus boasts of operational commonality, which means that the 10 aircraft models ranging from the 100-seat A318 through to the A380, feature very similar flight decks and similar handling characteristics. Unlike other aircraft models, this enables pilots to fly any of them with a single licence endorsement.

Air Malta took delivery of an Airbus 168-seater A320 last month and of a 141-seater A319 last Wednesday.

The A320 was the first of 12 new aircraft from the same Airbus family to be wet leased to Air Malta over the next four-and-a-half years by the International Lease Finance Corporation.

All 12 aircraft will be from the A320 family powered by CFM International engines and will each be leased for a period of 12 years.

By the end of this year Air Malta will have received five A310s and two A319s.