19 FlightCom Magazine
HEAD TO HEAD AGAINST BOEING
Jean Pierson, 44 years old and head of Aerospatiale’s aircraft
division, was picked to head the second generation of Airbus
leadership. Pierson had no political background, but he brought solid
industrial experience and a clear vision. Within six months of being
appointed, he submitted his view of Airbus’ future to the supervisory
board. “We intend to remain the leaders in the widebody market for
medium-/long-range aircraft, and we also want to enter the market
for very-long-range, widebody 250-seaters,” he stated. “We want to
be present in both of the markets by the early 1990s.”
The A340 first flew in 1991; the A330 a year later. The two
aircraft were designed to be as similar as possible, aside from the
number and types of engines. To ease pilot transition, they also were
developed to be as similar to the A320 as possible.
Pierson wanted Airbus to control 30% of the world market for
large commercial aircraft, up from the 17% in 1984. For his vision
to become reality, he made a
daring move: Traditionally,
the sales director had been
British, in keeping with
the tradition of splitting
senior management duties
between shareholder
nations. But Pierson picked
an American, John Leahy,
a brash New Yorker who
had turned around Airbus’
North American sales
organization after joining
the company in 1985 and
landed a breakthrough order
from Northwest Airlines for
100 A320s.
“The culture [in
Toulouse] was already
changing, but not by much,”
Leahy recalled in a 2018
interview with AW&ST. “It was still a lot of ‘We know how to sell
airplanes. Air France will buy, Lufthansa will buy, British Airways
will not buy,’ and so on. We really had to learn how to become an
international sales organisation.”
Leahy quickly sought to extend his formula for success in North
America to other regions. “When I got here, our vice president for
China was sitting in a hotel suite in Beijing. That was the office. So
we quickly broke ground for new quarters outside of the city by the
airport. We put in a training centre, parts centre and vendors.”
Leahy told the Airbus board in 1995 that a market share of 50%
should be reached by 2000, given that McDonnell Douglas was about
to be merged into Boeing. That goal was met, but matching Boeing
became an obsession that dominated Airbus thinking at times and
led its leaders to make big mistakes.THE TWO BIG MISTAKES
Two errors in particular stand out. In the early 1990s management
still believed that the future of true long-haul flying was with four-
engine aircraft, even though Boeing was already working on the
777, which entered commercial service in 1995. Airbus believed theA340 was the right aircraft to compete with the 777—after all, key
airlines such as Lufthansa had encouraged it to go for four engines.
Lufthansa still operates a sizeable A340 fleet, which it now regrets
because of the high operating costs. And it was easy to sell the four-
engined A340s to South African Airways ahead of the Boeing 777,
as the A340’s extra two engines provided far better performance out
of Johannesburg’s ‘hot and high’ OR Tambo airport in the event of
the loss of power from one engine.
The second mistake was the belief that Airbus needed its
own very large aircraft to compete with Boeing’s 747, which was
suspected of generating monopoly margins. The first studies were
conducted in the late 1980s; one was the ASX 500/600 study
Aerospatiale presented in 1990 to airlines for comment. These
analyses were part of the basis for the later A380 development work
that led to industrial launch in 2000.
Looking back, the A380 is the symbol and result of a colossalmisreading of the market. In the mid- and late 1990s, the 747 was
past its peak—in spite of the 1988 introduction of the 747-400, a
major upgrade. For years, smaller widebodies like the 767 had
arrived in growing numbers on transatlantic routes. Then came the
777, which turned into a huge success. Airbus went after the wrong
target.
The decision to pursue the A380 was not purely rational.
Europe’s aerospace leaders wanted their own big jet. “The A3XX
will still be in service when Airbus celebrates its centenary,”
Pierson proclaimed in 1997, one year before he left the company at
age 58. That enthusiasm was carried forward by Noel Forgeard, a
representative of the industrial and political elite in Paris who took
the reins of the company in 1998 and officially launched the A380
programme in 2000.
Airbus had grandiose plans for a family of A380s: The -800 was
to be followed by the 800ER, then a stretched -900 and a shorter
-700, plus a freighter. The A380-800 wing was designed so it could
be used on a larger variant, which made it less efficient.
Some airlines also joined the euphoria. Virgin Atlantic, one of
the original launch customers, promoted a view of the aircraft asAlways innovating - the BLADE wing extensions on this A340 aids laminar flow research.