Sputter, cough, sputter
EuroNews EuroNews : Streiff quits as Airbus boss — What does this tell you about the future of Airbus and these Inter-European schemes? The entire EU is a house of cards if you ask me.
Christian Streiff, the chief executive of troubled planemaker Airbus, has resigned after just three months in the job. The official announcement, following days of rumours, came after the European stock markets closed on Monday, but earlier the shares of parent company EADS had already fallen further.
Sources said he quit because he was not given the autonomy and the money that he wanted to sort out the mess at Airbus caused by delays of its A380 superjumbo. Last week Airbus said deliveries to airlines will now run two years late, due to unanticipated complications in the wiring for the giant planes.
One gotta love the wishful thinking some Yanks display here. Europe will be fine, thank you very much. As you may recall, not so long ago Boeing was the one company struggling and bleeding. And it’s kinda funny to watch those dire predictions about the European “dismal” future come and go. In the meantime, the US is sinking in some many areas that it ain’t funny no more, as they would say in Texas.
I wonder if there’s any historical precedence on why our European friends can’t get along? They love to call the US a child nation. Maybe they’re the grumpy old men nations. 🙂
good lord – worst. photoshop. ever.
Boeing had these same problems, only more severe, a few years ago. They went through a cycle, fixed it, and survived. I have no reason to believe that the same will not be true for Airbus.
Tom
It’s just one plane out of a fleet that’s doing pretty well. Europe’s getting along just fine. They can’t afford to fight with Islam rising against them.
#4 – Fully agree.
Ida know – I found myself giggling at the gif, as it were. I like it.
Meanwhile, the bigger question is not Europe, but rather, why is it so hard to make the airline business in general stand on it’s own? Personally I think it’s because so few of them are allowed to practice market economics. Competing on price alone is probably the biggest problem. Tickets are too cheap, service sucks. I fly only when compelled to, as I suspect most of us do.
why is it so hard to make the airline business in general stand on it’s own?Simple. Because flying is a commodity business. The customers consistantly vote with their pocketbooks for lower fares versus service.
An airline only has control over part of the flying experience. They have little control over airport are traffic jams, parking, shuttles, security, weather, air-traffic control, price-gouging airport stores, and crappy airports that are looted by greedy cities (LAX & JFK anyone?). So giving a customer an extra cookie or a free beer doesn’t really make the customer happy.
The customer, on the whole, feels that the flying experience is going to be a miserable experience anyway…. so why pay more?
A house of cards indeed. The member states constantly squabbling amongst themselves. Never agreeing, each one on the lookout for themselves, and the farmers holding everyone to ransome and all the while getting deeper in debt.
Oh wait. That was my anti-America rant.
While I admire the technical achievements of the A380, I can’t help but think the talk of putting shops, gyms and other luxuries on the superjumbo is a pipe dream. No airline is going to ignore the money to be made by cramming more people into the plane like sardines in a can.
Boeing is making a far smarter move in building planes like the 787. It’s interesting to note that while Airbus is struggling to get the A380 delivered on time, they’re also having problems getting their 787 competitor, the A350 in the air as well.
Air travel causes the most pollution of any kind of travel except canoeing. Make them all solar powered.
#1…Proud Alien….it’s not just the Airbus. Europe is a mess because of bearucratic red tape for everything. Half the member countries are violating major trade rules everyday to protect National industries(natural gas, oil, farming, wine making, cheese, fishing, steel) just about every facet of their economy. They are far more protective than the U.S. and we, I used to think were the worst.
If the E.U. goverment ever actually becomes a real goverment, then they might just be fine, but as it now stands, it’s a lot of no name, unelected officals calling the shots and like typical bureaucrats everywhere, they are power hungry.
A lot of the above is also the U.S…..the difference is, we could if we wanted change the rules through elections, if we had some candidates with balls.
#11 is right about the rules – specially France and Germany have their own.
The latest EU-members, Romania and Bulgaria, had to meet strict standards in order to get accepted in the club. The thoroughly corrupted Italy could not have made it, but it do not have to care about the rules being one of the big. (Well, I must add that Italy does respect the Geneva convention and they do elect their presidents without the help of supreme court like less developed democracies and banana-republics prefer to do. So Italy is not that bad really.)
The decision making in the EU is practically paralyzed all the time because there’s always an election coming on in one of the biggest member countries – no real reforms can ever be made and the wine producers may rely on the EU fulfilling their every need in the future also.
Now, there!