Aircraft

New Airbus chief executive Christian Streiff has spent his first week touring the manufacturer’s assembly lines and mulling the shape of his new management team.

With the A380 delay recovery plan his number one priority, Streiff must also decide what Airbus will say at next week’s Farnborough air show about future products, particularly the revised A350.

An aerospace outsider, the former chief operating officer of French industrial group Saint-Gobain realises that Airbus needs a credible competitor to Boeing’s successful 787 and to convince A380 customers that the programme will not suffer further delays, says a senior source. “We have an industrial problem. We don’t have a problem with the aircraft,” says the source.

Airbus’s two veteran chief operating officers, Charles Champion and John Leahy – respectively in charge of the A380 programme and the company’s top salesman – are among the senior executives whom Streiff will have to decide whether to retain or replace. But Streiff’s reshuffle could go much further, with the possibility of further executives being brought in from outside or other parts of EADS to force a cultural change in the organisation, says the source.