Airbus delays A350 after glitch

Reuters, 29 July 2012

Airbus announced a fresh delay to Europe’s newest passenger jet on Friday, but the cost of the setback to the A350 barely dented a stronger-than-expected first-half performance that put rocket fuel under the shares of parent company EADS.
Shares in Europe’s largest aerospace company rose 6 per cent and topped 30 euros for the first time since May after it raised profit and revenue forecasts, outpacing a broad rally fuelled by hopes of central bank support for the struggling global economy.
Delivering his first results since stepping up from the Airbus unit in June, EADS chief executive Tom Enders said a top priority was improving profits by delivering on major projects -a problem for both Airbus and rival Boeing.
‘Another focus of our efforts is to further integrate and globalise EADS,’ he said in a statement, weeks after Airbus unveiled plans to build an assembly plant in the United States.
The three-month delay to the A350 follows a glitch in wing production on the planemaker’s most ambitious project and pushes first delivery of the mid-sized jet — Europe’s answer to the Boeing 787 Dreamliner — into the second half of 2014.
The A350 was already a year behind its original schedule but Airbus wants to iron out problems before the start of final assembly. A backlog of unresolved problems was blamed in part for three-year delays on the A380 superjumbo and Boeing’s 787.
Problems in drilling holes in the wings on the carbon-composite A350 were first reported by Reuters at this month’s Farnborough Airshow.
The delay will result in a charge of 124 million euros, EADS said. The delay will result in a charge of 124 million euros, EADS said.
Airbus and Boeing are ramping up production to meet surging demand for fuel-saving jets as airlines cut costs to survive the economic downturn while feeding growth in emerging markets. But both have faced persistent problems.