Much of this variation in size, in the passenger planes at least, is achieved by simply lengthening or shortening the central.section of the passenger cabin. The front and back (sorry, cockpit and tail section) stay the same, while the mid-section is customized to the required passenger configuration. This, of course, saves a fortune in re-tooling and many other areas.
The innovation aspect of Airbus threads through the business model. The company produces almost exactly the aircraft the customer requires whether it be a question of range, capacity or configuration, Airbus has a plane for the purpose. Nineteen models and 8,619 aircraft sold to over 200 different customers says it all.
Airbus has a supply chain that involves a number of European countries, where various pieces of the puzzle are sourced, before the aircraft are finally assembled in Hamburg or Toulouse. Of the 57,000 company employees, over 21,000 work in Germany - at the Hamburg plant and various other sites, most of them very close by.
Even the shipping of the larger parts from Hamburg to Toulouse or vice versa, or from the other Airbus centers, equates to the solving of some serious puzzles and must have called for incisive lateral thinking. After all, it would be difficult to send major Airbus parts through the mail or via traditional freight lines! Your DHL man won’t be turning up with half an A380 fuselage under his arm.
Some of the not-quite-so-huge pieces do make their way around Europe on the back of trucks but most of the structures are literally “shipped” - using rivers in France as well as sea-going vessels.
Airbus’s distinctive Beluga cargo planes – named after the whale they resemble – are used to fly the wings in from the United Kingdom and the Hamburg plant features and extra long runway (longer than the ones at Hamburg airport itself) to accommodate the A380 and the Beluga. The Hamburg site is responsible for much of the interior work on the A380, as well as the final assembly of A321, A318 and A319 aircraft. .
With 165 A380 orders in hand, and delivery stretching out over the next twelve of fifteen years, and with plants operating at capacity, the thinking caps are always on at Airbus trying to reduce the already tightly-crafted production lag-time for each aircraft.
For any business, such a confirmed income stream would be regarded as a god-send and, from all reports, it appears Airbus’s only worries lie in the fate of the US dollar which has been travelling less like a modern jet and more like the Wright brothers’ early model of late. Perhaps they will be quoting in Euros soon?