Aircraft

Airbus looks for funding from industry partners as its confirms plans to outsource half of airframe production

Airbus is embarking on a supplier charm offensive in a bid to persuade industrial partners to help share the €10 billion ($13.2 billion) A350 XWB development costs, after the expected industrial launch last week of the new twinjet.

Airbus president and chief executive Louis Gallois has confirmed that the airframer wants suppliers to produce half the aerostructure content on the aircraft, potentially saving Airbus up to €1.8 billion in development costs. This could reduce its dependence on controversial launch aid as a means of financing new jet programmes, and also ease its burden of composite materials development.

"Our plan is to outsource 50% of A350 airframe production, which would allow us to hand over [part of the project] to partners participating in the development," says Gallois. "The target is €1.8 billion. We are talking to candidates."

Airbus has switched to a carbonfibre structure for the redesigned A350's fuselage - having previously adopted aluminium lithium for the original version of the twinjet. But unlike Boeing, which is producing the 787's carbonfibre fuselage as large single-piece sections, Airbus will build the A350's fuselage from composite panels. It claims that the concept is more "repair-friendly", but Airbus's decision may also have been driven by its lack of suitable composite manufacturing infrastructure to produce such large sections.

Gallois made the comments shortly before the second attempt last week by the EADS board to agree a €10 billion finance package for the long-range twinjet.

Around €6 billion of the A350's development costs will be financed by Airbus parent EADS and another €4 billion through state-backed financing from the four Airbus governments of France, Germany, Spain and the UK. France is also understood to have agreed to guarantee an additional part of the financing plan.

The exact breakdown of the sources of this external finance - to be available from 2010 - has yet to be determined, but could be a combination of bond issue, reimbursable loan or alternative sources, structured to avoid any risk of exacerbating the transatlantic trade dispute over European launch aid for aircraft programmes.