Summary
Through a series of spectacular management miscalculations and failures, not the least of which are the A380 and A400M (or the five ceos since 2005), Airbus does not have the money or the nerve to build the A350 without direct government assistance.
Analysis
Aged 40, Airbus is still effectively living at home and so intends to ask European Daddy Taxpayers to help finance its struggling A350XWB (the most RE-launched aircraft program in history), since EADS shareholders Daimler and Lagardère won't sanction using any of the company's €9bn+ cash reserves. This is NOT an Archie Bunker script, honestly.
All kinds of deep-running issues here, including the fact this European refusal to grow up will inevitably trigger further WTO attention, but the salient point is, as EADS ceo Gallois pointed out recently, support funding is on offer from various European governments and Airbus would be remiss not to take it -- Gallois' words, more or less. Added to that, Airbus ceo Enders last month extravagantly claimed that 40,000 jobs European jobs were at risk on the hugely-delayed A400M military aircraft. Very honest of him.
Since jobs equals votes, funny that the French, German and Spanish governments are now ready to talk Airbus funding while the British are also seeking to ensure they support Airbus through the supply chain as they're no longer partners in the struggling European OEM.
Airbus would be bankrupt without direct govenment aid and job-protecting nationalization of the French black-hole operation has just come a huge step closer with this latest begging-bowl approach from Airbus.
40 years old and still living at home? With the late A350 on top of all the other widebody delays, it looks like Airbus is too far gone now to be weaned off the taxpayers' breast. "Jobs for life" never sounded so good, eh, Archie?
