Airbus Military – the military side of EADS- on Thursday successfully ran all 4 engines of its new A400M military transporter plane’s engines and thus operated the aircraft completely autonomously for the first time. This is a good sign for an eventual maiden flight in December this year.
The A400M airlifter – the European successor to the ubiquitous Hercules C-130- has been delayed almost four years by problems with its new engines and other technical glitches. The contract is for 180 planes - 60 of them for Germany – the others for France, Spain, Belgium, Luxembourg, the U.K., and Turkey.
However the A400 has had more than just technical problems. There have been numerous financial cost over-runs [totaling about 2.3 billion Euro!!!!!!] which have nearly collapsed the whole project on several occasions.
Only large dull-witted European governments could be so stupid as to go along with the mounting costs and delays which have been imposed by EADS . Any normal commercial contract of this size with these cost over-runs and delays would have sunk years ago.
The Airbus parent EADS is now in talks with the governments who have ordered the aircraft to rescue the 20 billion Euro contract. There have been rumours that Airbus is willing to divide the delivery into two instalment payments to ease the financial burden on the purchasing countries and also to avert the complete collapse of the project.
The German government has invited officials from all the countries involved to hold another round of talks on the A400M in Berlin at beginning of December. Watch this space.
While the neither the tax payers of Europe nor the stock-holders of Boeing will be laughing – but on a somewhat lighter note – an Irish bookmaker will take bets on whether Boeing’s 787 “Dreamliner” or the Airbus’ A400M transport will fly first.
Both programs have faced repeated over-runs and both are now – depending on which rumour you want to believe, due to fly before the end of 2009.
