Airbus to speed up production, scours world for engineers
June 5, 2006   
   

 
Frankfurt - European planemaker Airbus aims to speed up production because customers say they have to wait too long when they order a plane, the chief executive of Airbus Germany said in an interview made public Monday.

Gerhard Puttfarcken said the company was still scouring the world for scarce aerospace engineers.

'Because of our full order books, our lead times are too long. We want to alter that. Otherwise we'll will lose some of our market potential,' he said in the interview, to appear in print Tuesday.

'Customers tell us they don't see why you order a plane and have to wait several years for it.' He said actually manufacturing a plane took less than a year. The planemaker mainly builds its smaller models in Germany and its larger models in France.

The German sites can currently turn out 30 a month of the smallest series, the A318, A319, A320 and A321, which comprised the main part, or about 900, of last year's 1,111 orders for Airbus jets.

'From spring 2007 we'll manage 32 planes monthly, and a year beyond that 34 monthly,' said the chief executive.

Airbus had just opened a fourth painting shed at its main site in Hamburg and was still recruiting engineers. Of 1,250 vacancies advertised this year, about half had been filled.

'We're still looking for about 600,' said Puttfarcken. But specialists were hard to find.

'We've found some engineers at Saab in Sweden. We've also been interviewing in Britain, Italy and Spain,' he said.

He said Airbus was also seeking suppliers outside Europe, particularly in China, Russia and India. 'We're looking all over for partners to help us,' he added.

In a related development, Airbus attacked its US rival Boeing Monday for hiring a US law firm that had previously worked for the European company on competition and subsidies issues.

An Airbus spokesman said the company was seeking a declaration in a Washington court that it was unethical for Wilmer Cutler to represent Boeing at World Trade Organization (WTO) hearings.

The United States and the European Union are in dispute over subsidies to their aerospace companies.

© 2006 dpa - Deutsche Presse-Agentur