Leeham News and Analysis
There's more to real news than a news release.
Farnborough: Odds and Ends
Best One-Liner:
Airbus’ John Leahy is famous for his witty one-liners, but the best one at the show goes to Boeing’s Randy Tinseth. As we were waiting for the Boeing press briefing to begin on Day 1, we remarked how dirty the Airbus A380 test plane was. A regular at air shows, the plane was parked right outside the media center. It clearly hadn’t been scrubbed down for looks, with dirt streaks all over the fuselage. The logos of the A380 customers at the front of the airplane were equally covered in dirt. It stood in sharp contrast to the new Boeing 787 parked just yards away from the A380, in its shiney white paint.
Said Tinseth, virtually giggling: “They don’t wash it because they’re afraid one of the logos will come off,” suggesting a cancellation. “And you can quote me on that.”
We told the story to one of Airbus’ top PR people, who grudgenly acknowleged it was a great line. No slouch himself, he retorted the 787 was so clean because it hasn’t flown much.
Tanker face off at Farnborough
Boeing and EADS held tanker briefings this week–Monday for Boeing, Tuesday for EADS.
Boeing offered up top program officials while EADS offered up two American crewmen from its test flight program, a pilot and a boom operator. Boeing’s briefing was a standard presentation followed by Q&A; most of the briefing was taken up by the formal presentation.
EADS was an interactive briefing with reporters after a few brief remarks, with nearly the entire session devoted to Q&A.
French union understands “Buy American” on tanker
Update, July 19: Airbus says CGT is fourth Union out of five for Airbus in France, representing about 10 percent of Airbus employees in France.
Update, July 16: We received this from CGT: the union severed ties in 1978.Christian and Jean-Jacques were amused and laughed about the Airbus response.
Original Post:
Only a few days after EADS and Boeing (and the long-shot bid from US Aerospace-Antonov) submitted their bids for the $35bn KC-X contract to supply tankers to the US Air Force, a French union at Airbus declined to endorse the EADS bid.
The Federation des Travailleurs de la Metallurgie, or CGT, holds the position that the French military should buy its equipment from French industry and to be consistent with this position, told us that it understands the “Buy American” approach of Boeing supporters.
Airbus and EADS dismissed the CGT’s view as that held by a minority union concerned about outsourcing and off-shore jobs.
Questioning the effect of the WTO
We’re not the only ones questioning the effect of the recent WTO ruling against Airbus and its illegal subsidies.
A respected business writer from The Seattle Times has weighed in with this opinion piece.
We’ve long been cynical of the WTO and the Airbus/Boeing complaints as little more than political talking points. We’ve noted before the ineffectual rulings that Canada and Brazil illegally subsidized the Bombardier CRJ and Embraer EMB-jets, and nobody imposed sanctions.
Boeing offers KC-767 to USAF
It’s now official: Boeing submitted a bid for the KC-X competition, offering the KC-767 NewGen tanker.
Boeing did not schedule a press conference, so the initial press release detailing its bid is below the jump, with our reporting following the PR.
EADS submits tanker bid; Boeing to follow
Update, 2:30 PM:
- Here are three PDF slides of information from the press conference, comparing the KC-45 with the KC-767 NewGen: KC-45 slides 7-08-10.
- Boeing does not plan a press conference with its tanker submission tomorrow-just a press release and a note on its Tanker Blog. We will create a separate posting for this information tomorrow.
- Addison Schonland has an 11-minute podcast with Airbus Americas Chairman Allan McArtor.
Original Post:
EADS will submit its bid today for the KC-X tanker competition. Boeing’s bid will be filed tomorrow, when they are due.
(Detour:) This just moved from Bloomberg: The release of the WTO’s Interim Report on the EU complaint about “illegal” subsidies to Boeing has been pushed from July 16 to September.We cannot help but be skeptical about this. Every time this report was due, with timing happening to coincide with a key date in the KC-X tanker competition, the WTO mysteriously postponed its release date. Call us conspiratorial, but it seems that multiple “coincidences” are at work here. The announcement came from the US Trade Representative’s Office. Hmmm…..
Here is the Airbus statement concerning the delay: