February 19, 2007

SURPRISE?:

Airbus postpones major restructuring announcement (Reuters, February 19, 2007)

European Aeronautic, Defence & Space Co., the parent company of Airbus, on Monday postponed a major announcement on job cuts planned for Tuesday, saying European nations could not agree how to share out work on its next aircraft, the wide-bodied A350.

The surprise statement exposed continued rifts among the four countries where Airbus plants are based -- Britain, France, Germany and Spain -- as the planemaker prepares to axe up to 10,000 jobs or a fifth of its workforce. [...]

In a rare act of public brinkmanship, Airbus chief Louis Gallois challenged governments to end recent squabbling and cancelled union and press briefings on his "Power8" restructuring programme which had been called for Tuesday.


It's Europe--it's all brink.

Posted by Orrin Judd at February 19, 2007 3:22 PM
Comments

Are JetBlue's problems caused by their buying Airbuses?

Posted by: erp at February 19, 2007 5:32 PM

The problem with welfare states is that they all want to be on the same side of the dole.

Posted by: ras at February 19, 2007 6:05 PM

erp: No - the planes are fine. JetBlue's problem is that it grew to a large schedule without ever having a disruption like it did last week. And because the problem happened at its erstwhile "hub" (JFK), its entire schedule (crew assignments, planes, and other logistical stuff) got messed up completely. And the company had to make arrangements to transport a whole lot of angry customers, which meant charter flights, because they don't have contractual swaps with other airlines to handle these sorts of problems.

Southwest is similar, but they don't have a "hub" in the same sense, so if one airport goes down, their planes keep flying, they just don't go to the conked-out airfield. Only a limited number of crew and airplanes are affected.

Posted by: jim hamlen at February 19, 2007 11:00 PM

Thanks jim. I was pretty annoyed when they decided not to buy American, so I stopped flying with them. Looks like I made the right choice for the wrong reason.

Posted by: erp at February 20, 2007 9:17 AM
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