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Aviation History
1997
1997 - 1910.PDF
Dassault merger in doubt as France keeps Aerospatiale THE FRENCH Government has thrown cold water on the privatisation of its biggest aero space company, Aerospatiale, rais ing further questions about the planned merger with privately owned Dassault Aviation. Defence minister Alain Richard has made it clear that Aerospatiale will remain in state hands, and that Dassault Aviation will be expected to toe the line and merge to form an aeronautics "pole" around which other European manufacturers can regroup. The statement comes after the Government's change of heart about defence-electronics giant Thomson-CSF, which it now confirms will be privatised. "The Government hopes to convince Dassault Aviation that the forces [of the two companies] can be combined while maintaining Aerospatiale in the public sector," Richard told Le Monde on 24 July. In what has been taken as a thin ly veiled direat to the Rafale fighter and Dassault Aviation president Serge Dassault, who has consistent ly made the privatisation of Aero spatiale a key condition of the merger, Richard adds that the Government would give "priority" to "totally harmonised" French and German arms purchases, saying that".. .we are studying the devel opment of certain programmes". The Government's move will revive arguments about the respec tive valuations of the two com panies, and about plans for the incorporation of the future entity into whatever grouping results from the sell-off of a majority stake in Thomson-CSF. Details of the Dassault-Aerospatiale merger were well advanced before the recent general election. J Boeing/MDC merger is set to start on 4 August BOEING PLANS to start its merger with McDonnell Douglas (MDC) from 4 August after constructing a last-minute deal to gain approval from the European Commission (EC). The EC Competi tion Commissioner Karel Van Miert announced ap proval in principle for the deal on 23 July, proclaiming victory after having secured a series of conditions from Boeing which include an end to exclusive airline supply deals and the promise to operate MDC's civil airliner arm as a separate com pany. Europe is due to sign off the deal formally by the end of July. A key part of the deal, however, is to put in place safeguards on the "spill-over" benefits of the MDC defence operations, which the EC believes could give Boeing an unfair advantage in civil-aircraft business. Boeing has agreed to sup ply an annual report to the EC over the next ten years laying out patents gained with the help of US Government-funded programmes and to license such technology to other commercial-aircraft manu facturers for a royalty. Despite claims from Boeing chairman Phil Condit that the civil business receives no benefits from US Department of Defense work, there have been growing com plaints from Europe over such sub sidies. Van Miert calls the deal "spectacular", and some within the European aerospace industry are Van Miert claims success, but Condit is still smiling counting the deal as an unprece dented breakthrough. "It's an area in which they would never make a concession on in the past," says one senior academic. Van Miert also confirms that the EC had considered forcing Boeing to sell MDC's civil Douglas Air craft arm, but failed to establish any potential buyers. The US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) in its earlier approval for the merger had already concluded that Douglas was no longer considered a viable competitor in the commercial-air craft business. Instead, the EC has secured agreements from Boeing that it will retain Douglas as a separate legal- entity company for ten years. Boeing also addressed the EC's concerns over the extent of the Douglas installed fleet, by promis ing not to leverage customer sup port on these aircraft to gain an advantage in new-airliner sales. Boeing has also agreed to not interfere with poten tial alliances between its suppliers and other com mercial-aircraft manufac turers such as Airbus Industrie. Accusations sur faced in Europe earlier this year that Boeing had put pressure on major supplier Northrop Grumman not to sign up for a risk-sharing roleintheA3XX. "We have obtained assurances that Boeing will not abuse its extremely strong position," says Van Miert. "This is essential for Airbus, since Boeing would have been able to profit from its position by dissuading suppliers from co operating with the consortium." As widely anticipated, Boeing was prepared to drop its use of exclusive deals. The group will not enter into any new pacts with air line customers for ten years and has pledged not to enforce the exclu sivity provisions in its existing agreements with American, Delta and Continental. Condit says that the price of the aircraft remain unchanged, and the US carriers say that Boeing's EC deal would have little effect on their purchases. Questions remain about the fate of the MD-95. Condit says that "...there are a number of things about the MD-95 that I find very attractive. It offers opportunity for some derivatives that are exciting in die area of 100 seats and below. We will look at the data, and try to go forward," he adds. • Owner seizes two GrandAir Airbus A300s at Hong Kong in lieu of payment GRANDAIR OF the Philip pines has had two of its Airbus A300B4s impounded in Hong Kong, after failing to make sched uled payments to the aircraft's Dutch leasor, ING. ING obtained court orders in Hong Kong to seize the two air craft, when the airline was late in making monthly lease payments totalling $700,000. The two A3 00s are on three-year dry leases. "Negotiations are going on now, and we hope to get the aircraft released soon," says GrandAir president Guillermo Ruiz. The airline admits that it delayed paving ING on account of the recent depreciation of the Philippine peso, but failed to advise ING of the situation. It adds that there had been a warranty dispute with the leasor over one of the A300s, which had been grounded for a month because of powerplant problems. The aircraft had an engine change in February. GrandAir had sent the aircraft to Hong Kong Aircraft Engineering for a C check, when it was im pounded. A second A3 00 was later stopped from leaving Hong Kong for Manila in the Philippines, stranding 120 passengers. A third A300B4 on lease from Airbus Leasing is not affected. J 6 FLIGHT INTERNATIONAL 30 July - 5 August 1997
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