Airbus supersalesman blames engines for A380 failure

This shortfall, together with the delayed entry into service right at the start of the world financial crisis in 2008, was the worst possible timing, no?

It was the perfect storm. Had we had it out in 2005 like we said we were going to or even had it been delivered with better fuel economy in 2007 with new generation engines, it would have been before the financial crisis. It would have had the momentum of building fleets up and getting things going. But as it was, you were building up a fleet right during a financial crisis, when business travel was way down, hurting the airlines financially. When financing was difficult, the brand new largest aircraft in the world made financing even more difficult. Yes, that extra two, three years delay in the program became deadly in itself. The lack of competitiveness with the engine fuel burn was also part of the perfect storm. And then of course the next thing it got hit with was the fuel prices that became very, very deadly. It all started lining up at the same time.

And then passengers didn’t want to fly via big hubs anymore, opposite to what you had always predicted…

People say more point to point was the way of the future. It became the way of the future as you could do it economically against the big airplanes like the A380 and Boeing 747 because now you had better fuel consumption. All in all, fuel prices hurt us, the engines manufacturers hurt us by giving us the wrong generation engine, and we committed suicide with not being able to technologically build the airplane and then having to redesign it and bring it out a couple of years later, right in the middle of the financial crisis.

Which role did the internal struggles at Airbus play in dooming the A380, which became shockingly apparent in a key phase of the project?

That played a key part in how screwed up it became. How can you manage a company as big and as sophisticated as Airbus, when you build wire harnesses that are just a few centimeters too short? You just don’t expect that from Boeing or Airbus. How could the Germans be sitting there in their own little world in Hamburg, the French in their walled city in Toulouse, and they clearly weren’t talking to each other? How could you have gone right to the end of your design phase, you have already manufactured these wiring harnesses, you’ve built the airplane, and now for the first time you are trying to connect them, and the workmen say: Hey, they don’t fit, guys? How could that happen? It was just dysfunctional.

PART 11 Thursday 26th November: Leahy’s belief in the A380s starts to crumble.

Andreas Spaeth will be publishing a book looking back on the program titled “A380 – the last giant” (initially in German) in March 2021.