It sounds too banal to be true, but it is. Airbus has announced the key reason why the giant aircraft A380, which is over two years late, has not been delivered to customers on time, leading the company into a deep crisis.
Director Christian Streif recently admitted that the aircraft design software used in different parts of the French-German company is not compatible. When kilometers and kilometers of cables for the aircraft arrived in France from the German parts of the company, it turned out that, simply put, they do not ‘fit’. The French part of the company in Toulouse uses one variant of CATIA, the aircraft design program, while the German part of Airbus in Hamburg uses another. Robert Weigl from a Munich company that integrates design programs says that the two types of programs used at Airbus simply cannot communicate with each other.
The debacle with the A380 aircraft likely would not have occurred if Airbus had used new computer programs that generate 3D models of aircraft, as Boeing did for its new 787 Dreamliner. The Airbus A380 is a project from which the company expects more than six billion dollars in the global market over the next four years, yet the company’s management saved on computer programs, a vital part of the design process. Although customers have not canceled orders for the aircraft whose delivery is more than two years late, it is known that Airbus will have to pay millions in penalties due to the delays. (Jasmin Krpan)
