Airbus Opens A350 Factory
On October 23, Airbus officially inaugurated the 74,000 square-meter A350 XWB Final Assembly Line (FAL.) Situated in Toulouse, France, at full production, the FAL will employ 1500 people who will build up to ten aircraft a month by 2018, according to Airbus.
French Prime Minister, Jean-Marc Ayrault and Airbus President and Chief Executive Officer, Fabrice Brégier were on hand on October 23 to inaugurate the building.
The ceremony, held inside the FAL, was attended by French political representatives, regional officials, and representatives from other Airbus home governments, as well as Airbus customers, suppliers, top executives and over 1,000 employees.
Guests at the ceremony were able to see the first two A350 XWB aircraft—the static aircraft and the first flyable aircraft, MSN1—at different stages of final assembly.
The static aircraft, an A350-900,which will be used solely for ground tests, has nearly completed assembly, with a full fuselage, two wings and the vertical tail plane joined, according to Airbus. The aircraft will be transferred to the static test hangar at theToulouse Jean-Luc Lagardère site to be prepared for static tests to start inspring 2013. The first flyable A350-900 (MSN1) has a joined fuselage. The wing, vertical and horizontal tail plane for MSN1 are inside the FAL and will bejoined to the fuselage in early November.
As the jetliner family’s middle family member, the A350-900 accommodates 314 passengers in a typical three-class configuration. The longer-fuselage A350-1000 version seats 350, while the shortest A350-800 has a capacity of 270 passengers.
The facility is named after Airbus pioneer, Roger Béteille, who was one of Airbus’ four founding fathers.He was instrumental in the development of fly by wire flight controls, one of Airbus’ key innovations which has since become the industry standard. Béteillewas also responsible for the introduction of the world’s first two engine wide-body aircraft, the A300 which performed its first flight 40 years ago. (Source:Airbus Press Release)
In other reporting, the New York Times (10/21, Clark, Subscription Publication) noted the aircraft will “be the company's first all-new product since the A380 superjumbo… became a symbol of cross-cultural and industrial dysfunction that Airbus is eager to put behind it. … Six years ago, miscommunications in the design, manufacturing and installation of several hundred kilometers of electrical cables resulted in a devastating three-year delay to the A380 program that ultimately led to a reshuffling in management, the elimination of 10,000 jobs and more than $6 billion in losses.”
The article stressed new management methods at Airbus: “In addition to centralizing its internal design systems and decision-making processes, Airbus has involved the key suppliers tothe A350 in the design process from the start, sharing digital blueprints with them and even dispatching its own engineers to help train and guide contractors.”
And Airbus is to open a new XWBFinal Assembly Plant. The Puget Sound Business Journal (10/23, Wilhelm, Subscription Publication) reports, “…The new Toulouse final assembly facility is to use an approach similar to Boeing’s, by putting together fully assembled sub-assemblies built elsewhere. When fully operational, it will assemble 10 A350s a month, the same rate Boeing plans for its combined Everett, Wash., and Charleston, S.C., plants.”