Airbus Industries – Caught Between Several Rocks and a Hard Place

Based in Toulouse, pan-European aerospace giant Airbus SAS produces around half of the world’s jet airliners. Formerly known as Airbus Industrie, it began as a consortium of European aviation firms aimed at competing with American aerospace giants such as Boeing. Airbus employs around
57,000 people in four European countries and has three subsidiaries in the USA, Japan and China. John Prendergast investigates the problems surrounding some of Airbus’s biggest projects – the super jumbo A380; the A350; and the military aircraft, the A400M.