Airbus wins bet, makes president less of a loser

by Tom Johansmeyer on

When your reputation is so bad that you have to make a bet that you’ll meet production targets, as Airbus President Tom Enders did, you need to realize that your victory would be break-even for anyone else. The man with the poor track record scored a bottle of champagne by delivering the fourth of four planes to Emirates Airline on time. The total order is for 58, which means Airbus has plenty of work ahead of it.

Hell, he even had two days of wiggle room. If the champagne is as good as his reputation, Enders will endure an incredibly sweet victory.

Before we give Airbus too much respect, his announcement of champagne success was accompanied with a warning that the fifth plane, due by the end of March, will not be ready until mid-April. Of course, this will occur despite the fact that the on-time delivery “gives us a good basis to further ramp-up our production in 2009.” Emirates president Tim Clark leaked this tidbit to Reuters.

Enders made the bet with the media at a press conference in September because he’s missed his deadlines four times in three years. And, we all know that reporters are perpetually broke … they only make bets they’re likely to win. This says so much about Airbus and its leader.

Already, he’s screwed up 2009. Airbus parent EADS confessed that it will miss its objective of 21 A380s this year. This, apparently, is how one treats its largest customer.

[Via Reuters via USA Today]

That tanker order might not be going to Northrop and EADS after all

by Grant Martin on

Remember that huge ruckus earlier this year when Northrop and EADS won a contract to supply the US Air Force with a multi-billion dollar tanker order?

Americans went livid when they found out that a partially European (not French) company was going to be supplying equipment for the US Armed forces and the entire affair turned into a political whining point. People claimed that the French (not Europeans) would be taking American jobs, although many would still be created with Northrop plan, and few seemed to take some time to look at the facts: Boeing’s aircraft was the weaker tanker.

On departing the competition, the Chicago based airframe manufacturer vowed to fight on, and lo and behold, their appeal to the Government Accountability Office (GAO) found traction. Earlier this week the office determined that the competition was held unfairly and that the Air Force gave extra points to the opposing team where they shouldn’t have; you can read the gory details in this WSJ article, but I won’t bother you with them.

While these findings aren’t binding requirements to force the Air Force to rerun their competition, it’s a step in the right direction — an earlier recommendation by the GAO to rerun a helicopter manufacturing contract passed and is currently underway.

Now, if the entire competition goes back to the drafting table, Boeing will have a second chance to proffer the “correct” tanker and take another stab at America’s “overseas competition”. All at the cost of countless engineering, design, management, political and lobbying hours and even more tax dollars.

Fair is fair though, and as several commenters on the the above post and the GAO point out, you can’t award a contract on an uneven playing field.

May the best aircraft win.