Long read: How Airbus took off

Boeing’s success was underpinned by the might of the American military-industrial complex: “The Buy America Act of 1933 forced the US government to buy from American producers where possible. Military orders supercharged the industry and brought significant knowledge spillovers.

The Boeing B-47 bomber, introduced in the late 1940s, pioneered the use of 35-degree swept wings, which point backwards at an angle of 35 degrees and reduce drag at high speeds. This design went on to inspire nearly every commercial airliner around the world.

Meanwhile the Boeing 707, the company’s first ever airliner, derived its fuselage from the same prototype as the KC-135 Stratotanker, a military refueling aircraft.”

As Europe rebuilt post war, it fell back. As its national champions fell, the need for collaboration rose: “In 1965, the French, British, and German governments launched a working group to evaluate the potential of a wide-body commercial aircraft, which would later become the A300. Two years later, the three governments agreed to bear the entire costs of the development of the ‘European Airbus’. In 1970, the coalition was formalized with the creation of Airbus Industrie. The consortium quickly expanded to include Spain and the Netherlands.”

So why did Airbus succeed when other similar initiatives failed:

“Airbus prevailed because it was the least European version of a European industrial strategy project ever. It put its customer first, was uninterested in being seen as European, had leadership willing to risk political blowback in the pursuit of a good product, and operated in a unique industry.

…Roger Béteille, who led the A300 program, probably bears more responsibility for Airbus’s early success than anyone else. Béteille wasn’t interested in building an inferior European Boeing copy. Instead, he invested significant time in getting to know his potential customers and what they needed. This led to Airbus quickly tossing the original design for a 300-seat A300, in favor of a 225-250 seater, when it became clear that Air France and Lufthansa wanted a smaller product.

The revised A300B would prove much cheaper to develop, in part because it allowed the consortium to dispense with the expensive Rolls Royce engine in favour of a cheaper American alternative. In response, the UK exited the project, only to later return with a lower ownership stake.

This willingness to risk political blowback and avoid petty chauvinism in equipment choice was rare in industrial strategy.

Béteille went one step further. He designated English the official language of the project, instead of the usual mixture of languages that characterised European projects, and forbade the use of metric measurements to make it easier to sell into the US market.

Along with Felix Kracht, Airbus’s first production director, Béteille set a division of labour between the different countries that has persisted, with minor adjustments. French firms handled the cockpit, control systems, and lower-center fuselage; Hawker Siddeley (the inventor of the Harrier jump jet) in the UK designed and built the wings; German companies produced various fuselage sections; the Netherlands managed moving wing components; and Spain was responsible for the horizontal tailplane.

Based on Béteille’s market research, the A300B was optimised for fuel efficiency. The team stripped out unnecessary weight by using composite materials and raised the cabin floor to add cargo space. Hawker Siddeley’s wings, which would go on to influence industry standards, were designed with a curved shape on top to reduce air resistance, allowing greater lift and fuel efficiency.

At a time when almost every widebodied commercial jet had three or four engines, Airbus opted for a twin-engine design. The plane could theoretically fly on one and the company concluded that only a single extra engine was needed to provide redundancy for safety. The much cheaper twin-engine design is now the industry standard, even for ultra long-haul flights.”

The article goes on to highlight certain other factors including some luck which eventually led to the development and massive success of the A320 which dominates the skies today. Yet, the author reckons this success is hard to replicate elsewhere:

“Good industrial strategy requires favorable market conditions, consistent strategy in the face of political headwinds, and the courage to call it a day if failure seems likely. Getting one of these right is tough, and all three is exceptionally rare.

…We see this in Unidata, a 1973 consortium that brought together CII (France), Philips (the Netherlands), and Siemens (Germany) to produce a European mainframe line to rival IBM. With no clear leadership, rival members of the consortium pushed their own hardware and software approaches. Engineering efforts were duplicated. The project collapsed within two years amid recriminations.”