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AIRBUS LAUNCHES A380

In the Airbus headquarters in Toulouse, the champagne corks were popping as the European aircraft manufacturer elevated its momentous A3XX project to the status of an official A380 aircraft programme before the assembled dignitaries and representatives of the press on 19 December.

Standing before an actual size model of the fuselage of the euro-jumbo an enthusiastic EADS co-chairman, Manfred Bischoff, spoke of the A380 as his "beloved baby" and declared spiritedly, "With this aircraft we are breaking the Boeing monopoly." His French opposite number, Jean-Luc Lagardère, recalled how forty years earlier the first engineers had discussed Airbus, whereas today finished Airbus products had conquered the market. For the new century Lagardère predicted that the increasingly intense competition between Airbus and Boeing would become the most important topic of transatlantic trade. And Mike Turner, chief operating officer of BAE Systems, added that now that the company was trading as "Airbus Integrated Company, AIC" owned 80% by EADS and 20% by BAE Systems, it was keen with the A380 to attract more young people into working for the European aerospace industry.

Finally Airbus chief executive Noel Forgeard explained how the A380 designator had come about: the "3" stood for Airbus civilian aircraft while the "8" suggested "double decks, one on top of the other". The new A380 will have 49% more cabin floorspace but only 33% more passenger seats, resulting in a significant improvement in comfort. Fuel consumption will be 20% lower, working out at three litres per passenger per 100 kilometres and raising environmental acceptability significantly. And even the aircraft noise restrictions in London Heathrow, which are feared throughout the industry due to their strictness, will pose no problem to the new model.

This performance will be possible, according to Forgeard, thanks to the use of new, weight-saving composites made out of fibreglass-aluminium and carbon fibre and through the development of a state-of-the-art wing. This wing actually poses a quite special design challenge, for, instead of stretching it out freely so as to optimise fuel consumption, as is possible today and is in fact customary with other Airbuses, the engineers have to keep its wing span under 80m. If they can do this, then the A380 will fit onto most of the taxiways and aprons used by today's jumbo jets so that the airports will not need to make expensive structural modifications.

The A380 development costs Forgeard estimated at the programme launch at a total of $10.7 billion, of which Airbus would have to bear $5.2 million directly. On the other hand the programme will create 135,000 jobs in Europe, 47,000 of them in the aerospace industry, he said.

The accusation of illegal state subsidies Forgeard rejected vehemently: all loans would be granted on market terms and would be repayable. This would mean that funding arrangements for the A380 complied strictly with the US-EU agreement on aircraft subsidies of 1992. Jean-Luc Lagardère added that he expected Boeing to accept these conditions and the fact that Airbus is its competitor, since Boeing was actually in receipt of more state assistance than Airbus.

Away from the crowds at this festive event, Manfred Bischoff explained the sales potential of the A380 in an exclusive interview with FLUG REVUE. He anticipated that there would be a market for a total of 1,500 aircraft in the A380 size category over the next 20 years. Between the major hubs traffic was actually growing more strongly.

He had great hopes that the German flag-carrier Lufthansa would decide on an A380 buy. The German company would be announcing its decision at the beginning of 2001. As Airbus's "most important partner", Lufthansa had had a say in all the decisions and was being offered launch customer discounts. However, Lufthansa's route profile and requirements suggested that it would not need the A380 until 2007. Discussions were still continuing, but he was "very optimistic". He could not imagine Lufthansa not placing an order. At the time of going to press, however, Lufthansa had still not decided between the 747X and the A380 and was carefully avoiding making any public statements on the matter.

On the question of the labour effects of the A380 programme on Germany's federal states in the east, Bischoff added that Airbus would use the geographical proximity of the eastern states to award suppliers there a "fair share" of the work. In fact they were even planning to give preference to suppliers from the new Länder and to actively support them. They intended to create several thousand jobs, especially in the areas of structure, equipment, synthetics and optics, and Jena was already being talked about as a prospective manufacturing location.

Then, before a small group of journalists, Gustav Humbert, chief operating officer of Airbus Industrie and head of development and production, spoke about his newest programme: he stressed that this was the first time Airbus had decided in advance on a relatively variable type family and was moving away from a single design to which additional variants would be added only subsequently. The family would consist initially of the baseline A380-800 version with 550 seats, an A380-800ER extended range version, the stretched A380-900 for 650 passengers and "on top of that" plus the A380-800F freight carrier version, for which Federal Express from the USA has meanwhile placed an order. In addition, Humbert believed a shortened A380-700 might also get under way at the end of 2001 / early in 2002. The sequence in which the family members appeared would be geared towards airline demand. "Significantly more take-off weight" was still potentially feasible for the A380. Humbert did not expect wake turbulence to be a problem for the A380 as this was expected to be even weaker than for the 747.

The airports were also ready for the A380. In Europe there had been direct exchanges of information with Frankfurt, Munich, Berlin, Paris, London and Amsterdam. Frankfurt's Terminal 2 could even handle the A380 already today.

After the maiden flight in 2004, two or three prototypes would undergo flight testing in parallel. Finally, at the end of the discussion, Humbert turned to the subject of engines for the A380: he was confident that the Engine Alliance would offer an alternative powerplant to the Trent 900 which could be certified at the same time. After all, "a monopoly is not a good thing".

From page 28 of FLUG REVUE 3/2001