SBM1103 Project and Program Information & Communication Systems
The airbus A380 Airplane INTRODUCTION The Airbus A380 airplane is a double-deck, wide-body, four-engine jet airliner produced by Airbus.1 It is the irst airliner able to carry almost 900 passengers. It has the most spacious interior of any jetliner ever built, the biggest wings, and the This section ©2016 Luigi Morsa, Ph.d. All Rights Reserved. The section “The Airbus A380 Airplane” ©2016 Luigi Morsa, Ph.D. All rights reserved. 1 Airbus is the European aircraft-manufacturing consortium formed in 1970 as Airbus Industrie. It is now one of the world’s top two commercial aircraft manufacturers, competing directly with the American Boeing Company and frequently dominating the jetliner market in orders, deliveries, or an- nual revenue. Its initial shareholders were the French company Aérospatiale (later Aerospatiale Matra, 1999) and the German company Deutsche Airbus (later DaimlerChrysler Aerospace Airbus, 1989), each owning a 50 percent share. Spain’s Construcciones Aeronáuticas S.A. (CASA) joined in 1971 with a 4.2 percent share. Hawker Siddeley and other British companies were nationalized in 1977 into a single government conglomerate, British Aerospace (later BAE Systems, 1999), which joined Airbus with a 20 percent share in 1979. In 2000, all the partners except BAE Systems merged into EADS, which thus acquired an 80 percent share of Airbus (Eugene Rodgers, Flying High: The Story of Boeing [New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1996], pp. 415–416; Dornheim, “777 Twinjet Will Grow to Replace 747–200,” p. 43). However, in September 2006, European Aeronautic Defence and Space Company (EADS) acquired BAE Systems’ 20 percent share of Airbus, making it a 100 percent sub- sidiary of EADS. EADS is the major European aerospace company that builds commercial/military aircraft and helicopters, space systems, propulsion systems, missiles, and other defense products. In January 2014, EADS was reorganized as Airbus Group (“Commercial Airplanes: Order and Delivery, Summary,” http/www.boeing.com/commercial/orders/index.html. ). The group consists of the three business divisions: Airbus, Airbus Defence and Space, Airbus Helicopters. 1 2 PROJECT MANAGEMENT CASE STUDIES greatest overall engine thrust. No civil airliner since the supersonic Concorde has aroused such passion, such controversy, and such fascination.2 In addition to its remarkable engineering features, the A380 is very interesting from a management and didactic point of view, namely: ● Lessons learned from a project of this magnitude ● The different scenarios and strategies in the aircraft markets ● The ability of Airbus to compete with Boeing in every market segment ● The ability to create an icon capable of capturing the imagination of the world’s travelers with its double-deck load ● The ability to relieve congestion at the world’s busiest airports by taking up less space than two airliners it can replace HISTORY AND MOTIVATION OF A380 PROJECT In the preliminary design phase of a new aircraft, the irst step is the “market survey.”3 This phase is important because it is closely connected with the success of the aircraft. The new design has to be better than what already exists in the market. In addition, it is essential to determine if the market is willing to accept the new aircraft; in other words, if a demand exists. The new aircraft has to have features that make it more appealing than its competitors, and the market should show promises of growth. Otherwise, a new design is unlikely to succeed. In this regard, it is interesting to look closer at the motivations that brought the A380 concept to market and what makes A380 different from and better than its competitors. Considering the size of the project, the design of the A380 had a long gestation. In the summer of 1988, a small group of advanced project engineers of the Airbus New Product Development and Technology branch in Toulouse, France, started thinking about building a giant aircraft capable of carrying more than 800 passengers. The project, called “Ultra-High-Capacity Aircraft,” was totally unknown to the rest of aircraft-manufacturing consortium, includ- ing the Airbus leadership. The leader of the project, Jean Roeder, the brilliant engineer behind the concept of the A330 and A340, believed that this project was something that Airbus simply had to do. For too long a time Boeing had beneitted from its 747 monopoly. “Airbus was making effort at this time to get 30 percent of the market, and we thought that this just would not be possible in the long term if we did not get a complete set of aircraft in our program,” said Roeder.4 2 Rodgers, Flying High, pp. 415–416; Dornheim, “777 Twinjet Will Grow to Replace 747–200,” p. 43. 3 Guy Norris, Mark Wagner, Airbus A380: Superjumbo of the 21st Century. St. Paul, MN: Zenith Press, 2005. 4 Norris and Wagner, Airbus 380, p. 7. The Airbus A380 Airplane 3 In October 1988, Roeder asked for a meeting to discuss the new project with Airbus president Jean Pierson and chief operating oficer Herbert Flosdorff. Roeder brought with him a model of the concept. “Pierson was clearly surprised; he did not expecting something so big,” said Roeder. Immediately Pierson saw the possibilities but also the risk. Therefore, the idea remained a secret for another two years. Airbus started talking about the project within the company and began market research to assess if a market existed for an aircraft bigger than a 747.5 DaimlerChrysler and British Aerospace, two partners in the Airbus consortium as it then was, pushed for cooperation with Boeing because they were worried about the risk of competing head on over such a big new aircraft. An earlier battle between the McDonnell Doug- las DC-10 and Lockheed’s L-1011 had weakened both irms and pushed Lockheed out of the commercial aviation business entirely. Boeing wanted to produce a plane substantially bigger than the 747 with the purpose of complementing rather than replacing it. However, the agreement did not seem reachable in the near term, and meanwhile Boeing continued to have the monopoly on the superjumbo market, as it could use its big proits from the 747 to cut the price of its other jets, like the 737, which were in a direct competition with Airbus. For this reason, in 1995, Airbus eventually decided to work alone. A year later, Jürgen Thomas, a veteran German engineer known as the father of the A380, was appointed to lead the project. After a series of meetings with prospective customers,6 Airbus became con- vinced that there was indeed a large market for a modern plane capable of carry- ing between 550 and 650 passengers up to 9,000 miles.7 On December 19, 2000, the A380,8 previously known as the A3XX and dubbed “The Flagship of the 21st Century,” was launched commercially with 50 irm orders and 42 options from six major operators, including Emirates, Singapore Airlines, Qantas, Air France, Qatar Airways, and Korean Air. On April 27, 2005, at 10:29 a.m. in Toulouse, the Airbus A380 made its irst light. Finally on October 15, 2007, Singapore Airlines took delivery of the irst Airbus A380–800. The aircraft, MSN-003,9 entered ser- vice on October 25, lying between Singapore and Sydney.10 Typical passenger seating is shown in Figure I. 5 Guy Norris and Mark Wagner, Airbus A380: Superjumbo of the 21st Century (St. Paul, Minn.: Zenith Press, 2005). 6 In this regard, it is important to point out the fundamental difference with the other markets. In mar- kets with high technology and characterized by high costs, it is vital to produce something that will be of interest or, more explicitly, will be bought. 7 “The Giant on the Runway,” The Economist, October 11, 2007. www.economist.com/node/9944806. 8 The A380 designation was a break from previous Airbus families, which had progressed sequentially from A300 to A340. It was chosen because the number 8 resembles the double-deck cross section, and is a lucky number in some Asian countries where the aircraft was being marketed (Norris and Wagner, Airbus A380. ) 9 “MSN” stands for “manufacturer’s serial number,” which is a unique number or code assigned to a unit. The irst two MSNs of A380 have been retained by Airbus. 10 Benét J. Wilson, “The Airbus A380: A History,” airwaysnews.com, January 20, 2015. PROJECT MANAGEMENT CASE STUDIES 03 02 04 04 03 04 01 01 Platinum Private Suite 8 “Platinum” compartments Adjustable to fully flat bed Exclusive bar counter and Private storage cabinet 02 First Class 03 Economy Class 04 Mini Bar 70 seats 428 seats with 76 in the upper passengers can sit on comfy Adjustable seats can be deck and 352 in the main deck chairs at the bar or laze on laid flat Adjustable seat headrest luxury sofas while having their All seats have aisle access 9” digital widescreen TV favorite tipple delivered Figure I Airbus A380–800 superjumbo passengers placement seating Air bus A380 versus Boein g 747 Despite the rumors that the A380 was overweight and struggling to meet perfor- mance targets, Airbus delivered a remarkable plane. A380 is the “greenest” long- haul airliner, burning less than 1 gallon of fuel per passenger over 95 miles, fuel consumption comparable with that of a small turbo-diesel family car.11 Accord- ing to Airbus, the A380’s cost per seat came out at