Murdo Morrison: May 2010 Archives

The A400M is the cover star of the next Flight International (1-7 June), our special preview issue for ILA, the Berlin air show which begins on 7 June. Craig Hoyle has written an update on the military airlifter, which makes its public debut at ILA. It was meant to have appeared two years ago, but the programme stalled.

The fact that Germany is the A400M's biggest customer, accounting for a third of its 180-strong orderbook, means the show will give Airbus Military a huge opportunity to reverse some of the negative publicity surrounding the delays and the government bail out for the programme (which is likely to mean Germany and other countries trimming their orders).

Craig has also written about a very successful Airbus-led European cooperation programme, the NH90 helicopter, following a visit to see it in action in Finland.

We also have articles on German engine maker MTU, clustering in Hamburg, how Lufthansa Technik helped to get the A380 to ILA on time and the revival by Swiss champion Ruag of the Dornier 228.

Meanwhile, look out for a key decision on Monday over the future of ILA. The show has been held at Berlin Schoenefeld airport since 1992 (it was previously in Hanover) partly as a factor of German reunification. The rather ramshackle airport was the old East Berlin gateway and it was politically important to establish that half of the city as a new spiritual home for German aerospace.

But now Schoenefeld is being built over by the shiny new Berlin-Brandenburg International airport and the show's organisers need a new site in time for 2012. The original plan was for a new facility to be established beside the new airport, but progress on this has slowed. Now BDLI is considering Leipzig as an alternative venue, with a decision due to be taken on Monday 31 May.

Whatever the choice, BDLI admits that it faces a "very tight schedule" and "big time pressure". As anyone who has ever been involved with an air show knows, they take months to set up and sometimes years to market. Exhibitors want certainty before they commit, and show organisers and convention centre landlords are reluctant to take risks too until a critical mass of revenue and floorspace is banked. It could make for an interesting two years for Europe's "third" air show.

When Communism collapsed 20 years ago, Poland's aerospace industry was like much of its eastern European neighbours'. A strong educational ethos had meant there were plenty skilled engineers and a culture of professionalism. But under state ownership, the businesses were over-large, cumbersome, vertically integrated and unresponsive to market needs. Most of the output was military aircraft, helicopters or sturdy light and utility aircraft sold mainly throughout the developing world.

Since then, but especially in the past decade, Poland has got it about right. It did not rush to sell off its assets for a quick buck to the first here today, gone tomorrow bidder. Instead, it has engineered a dignified transition to foreign ownership for virtually all its state firms with a guarantee that these new owners will bring in new investment and integrate the companies into global supply chains. They are no low-cost "metal bashers" either. Although wage structures are more attractive in Poland than they are in Western Europe, these businesses are expected to contribute at the medium to high end of the value chain.

At the same time, it has encouraged other investors - big names and SMEs - to set themselves up in Aviation Valley, the heartland of the aerospace industry in south-east Poland, and tried to establish a cluster, or local supply chain, of home-grown family businesses too.

The result is astonishingly successful. I visited Rzeszow - the centre of Aviation Valley - this week and will be writing a feature about the region in the 8-14 June issue of Flight International. It was not my first visit. I went there four years ago and reported on what was a work in progress then.

I paid my first visit to MTU in Munich this week as part of our pre-ILA special. The company is one of the great survivors of aerospace, having gone through umpteen changes of ownership over its history, but retaining its independence. It is this independence that has allowed it to variously partner with each of the big four US and European engine makers on many programmes, mainly with GE and Pratt & Whitney but also as part of the IAE consortium and with Snecma on military engines.

Things have moved on and, while in the past, MTU could depend on the fact that it was German champion to win its due "allocation" of workshare on international programmes, now it must let its technology do the talking in a global market. It is a doubly difficult challenge as Munich is hardly a low-cost manufacturing centre.

Labour in Bavaria doesn't come cheap and highly-skilled engineers - even in today's depressed industry - are at a premium. In addition, when a piece of kit fails or is due for overhaul, customers want it back yesterday. MTU's business model has been to continue to invest in expensive production technology: it's Munich factory has more machines than men. At the same time, it has outsourced a lot of medium-skill manufacturing to a new plant in Poland and established a service network around the world, including in China.

Read more about MTU's strategy in the 1-7 June issue of Flight International.

Next week's Flight International is really worth picking up for one feature alone. Our deputy editor Max Kingsley-Jones has done an in-depth feature on the Airbus A330-200 Freighter, Toulouse's first all-new cargo aircraft for almost two decades. You can read Max's piece here but to get the full impact of the illustrations, including Tim Bicheno-Brown's microcutaway, which shows graphically how Airbus has re-engineered its widebody twin into a cargo carrier, get a hold of the magazine. It is out on Tuesday 25 May.

For years outsourcing has been a huge trend in the military, in nations including the USA and the UK, with manufacturers and other providers using their expertise and commercial acumen to provide a more cost-efficient service to the armed forces. This has been the case in the MRO sector, where the enormous cost and complexity of managing a maintenance and upgrade regime as well as the associated supply chain for a large fleet has been acknowledged to be better carried out by the commercial sector.

In this week's Flight International (18-24 May), Stephen Trimble has a fascinating insight into the row over who controls the multi-billion dollar maintenance budget for the US Air Force's Boeing C-17s: industry or the air force. The USAF effectively wants to fire Boeing as the main provider in 2012 after a 12-year run and the defence contractor, understandably, is not happy.

We also have the inside story on the A320 upgrade and another detailed piece on a row...this time over how to reconcile confidential reporting of air safety incidents with a political and legal system in many countries that wants individuals to "blame" for accidents.

For the second time in four weeks, I've been grounded by the Icelandic ash cloud, luckily at home, but inconvenient all the same.

I was due in Munich today and tomorrow to talk to Premium Aerotec, MTU and EADS for our pre-ILA special that will appear in Flight International in our 1 June issue, and also in Flight Daily News.

The randomness of the shifting dust cloud meant that had my flight from Gatwick been 50min later, or had I been flying from Stansted or Luton, I'd have been fine. Gatwick was shut from 01.00 to 07.00 only and my 06.15 flight was cancelled with tomorrow at the same time the earliest I could rebook.

After the chaos of the initial six-day disruption, the airlines, airports, regulators and travelling public appear to have adopted a more sanguine, stoical approach to the problem, with easyJet in my instance offering clear, unambiguous information on its web site and a very straightforward method for rebooking. There's also a feeling that any closures are short term.

However, the industry is being seriously hit in the pocket now and there's a growing frustration though among carriers that the methodology on which airspace is being shut is flawed as my colleague David Kaminski-Morrow explains

The problem remains that nobody really knows what the risk is. Read my other colleague David Learmount's thoughts on it here.

 

 

 

It's Sunday and in the UK it's a bank holiday weekend, but for me and several of my colleagues it's business as usual, or business aviation as usual, at the EBACE convention in Geneva. The show is getting set up. Hall 7 above our editorial office is a buzz of activity (see picture below) as contractors perform the conjuring act of turning a building site into an exhibition in 24h. Here in the bowels of the Palexpo we are getting to work on issue one of Flight Evening News, which will be the first daily to bring delegates here news of that day's show, on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday.

We are also creating our first ever Interactive Flight Daily News at the show. The digital daily will be available for download on flightglobal.com from Tuesday, with further editions on Wednesday and Thursday. We'll also be blogging, Twittering and reporting in real time on the show for flightglobal.com. At the end of the show, we'll be pulling together the best bits for our report in Flight International 11-17 May.

I'll be blogging throughout the show and also fronting our I-FDN. It's early days but the mood of exhibitors turning up at the show today is a lot more upbeat than last year, when it was very much a case of putting on a brave face at a time when the industry was descending into its darkest days for a decade.