Airbus A350 plane production delayed. What's the holdup?

Airbus A350 production will be set back a few months until the beginning of 2014, the Airbus parent company said Friday. The Airbus A350 is meant to compete with Boeing's  787 'Dreamliner' jet fleet.

|
Bogdan Cristel/Reuters/File
Alphajets from the French Air Force Patrouille de France and an Airbus A 380 fly over Blagnac before the start of the 18th stage of the 99th Tour de France earlier this month. Production of Airbus' A350 model has been delayed due to technical issues.

Airbus parent company EADS NV on Friday announced a further delay to its new A350 aircraft as it reported second-quarter earnings that almost quadrupled from a year ago.

Net profit at the Leiden, Netherlands-based European Aeronautic Defence & Space Company was €461 million ($567 million), up from €121 million in the same period a year ago. Sales rose 12 percent to €13.5 billion. Analysts polled by Factset had forecast profit of €350 million on sales of €12.8 billion.

However, the aerospace company also revealed that the entry into service of Airbus's new A350, which is meant to compete with rival Boeing's 787 "Dreamliner," will be delayed by several months, until the second half of 2014. The company said the reason for the delay was "time taken for the implementation of the automated drilling process for the wings." Airbus has taken a €124 million charge as a result, and warned that further delays would lead to greater charges.

Incoming Chief Executive Tom Enders, promoted from Airbus in June, said the company's order book is now at a record €551.7 billion. He vowed to "globalize" EADS, citing an assembly line for the A350 in the U.S. as an example.

"One important step into this direction is our decision to build a final assembly Line for Airbus aircraft in the U.S.", he said. Earlier this month EADS said it would spend $600 million over five years to build an assembly line for its A320 single-aisle jet in Mobile, Alabama — its first factory in the United States.

Based on the company's first-half performance, Enders raised sales targets to a 10 percent increase in 2012 from the 6 percent EADS forecast after first quarter earnings. Operating profits will be €2.7 billion, up from €2.5 billion, he said.

Shares jumped 6.2 percent to €29.955 in early trading in Paris, where EADS has its primary listing.

Enders also stuck to 2012 targets for sales of 30 Airbus A380s, the world's largest passenger aircraft, but said the company would probably sell somewhat less than that in 2013. Airbus is in the process of fixing a problem with planes already in service it says is not an immediate safety concern: small fractures found near some rivets on some planes at the spot where wings' metal covers, or skins, are joined with the wings' ribs.

Airbus is fixing the problem on affected planes, which it says is not a design flaw but a construction flaw that arose during the building of the first A380s made. It will begin building planes differently in 2014 to avoid the problem.

Analysts believe some clients are pushing back their orders to get new planes, rather than working with retrofitted planes.

Enders says the company still forecasts sales of 35-39 A380s annually by 2015, the level needed for profitability.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to Airbus A350 plane production delayed. What's the holdup?
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/Business/Latest-News-Wires/2012/0727/Airbus-A350-plane-production-delayed.-What-s-the-holdup
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe