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Building The World's Largest Passenger Aircraft Wings 

Steve Minett, PhD & Chris Taylor, MBA

Employing more than 150,000 people and exporting around 60% of its output, the UK's aerospace industry is the second largest in the world and is responsible for 9.5% of the UK's total research and development (2001). In 2001, the national turnover was over £18bn and, in terms of value added business, it is second only to the United States. A recent DTI study highlighted aerospace as the UK's most globally competitive industry - a key measure of its global success being its penetration of the US market. For instance, 60% of all the US's aerospace subsystems imports are British. It is a high-skills industry, with wages 20% higher than the manufacturing average. With total world-class capabilities, strength in manufacture and research, and initiatives to maintain and improve its competitive edge, aerospace is a key sector in the UK economy and a major player in the global market.

The future of air transport is the 'super-jumbo', capable of flying 550-plus passengers and their luggage from London to Singapore , non-stop - more economically, and with fewer emissions than any competitor. This aircraft, the A380, is being built by the European company Airbus, and the wing design and manufacture defines the cutting edge of British-led technological achievement.

Airbus is an astonishing success story. In little more than the average lifespan of a commercial jet, the company now meets its sole remaining competitor head-to-head, and often wins; some 185 customers around the world operate Airbus aircraft, and - according to the company - one of its 3,000 aircraft takes off or lands, somewhere around the world, every four seconds around the clock.

International Cooperation

It's a success story, too, for cross-border cooperation. The parent company is headquartered in Toulouse, France, and operates under French law. It is 80 per cent owned by EADS (the result of a merger between Aerospatiale Matra SA of France, DaimlerChrysler Aerospace AG of Germany, and Construcciones Aeronauticas SA of Spain), and 20 per cent by Britain's BAE SYSTEMS. The company was first incorporated as recently as 2001; before that time it operated - and had done since 1970 - as a marketing, sales, and customer support consortium known as Airbus Industrie. British Aerospace joined as a full partner in 1979.

The company now centres its design, component manufacture, and assembly at 16 sites belonging to wholly owned subsidiaries in France, Spain, Germany, and the UK. In general terms, France produces the nose, flight deck, flying control systems and centre fuselage; Germany the fuselage sections and tailfin; Spain the horizontal tailfin; and the UK the wings and fuel system. It's a form of specialisation that allows - encourages - the creation of centres of excellence, without needless duplication, and which helps to ensure competitive costs in the intensely competitive world market for commercial aircraft.

Airbus's Two UK Centres

The two principal Airbus centres in the UK, each employing around 5,500 people, are at Filton near Bristol, and Broughton in North Wales. Filton has manufactured aircraft for almost 100 years, including the entire British-built Concorde fleet. Today the site houses Airbus', wing design engineering, research and development, component manufacturing, and some wing sub-assembly. It also manages world-wide strategic procurement for wings and landing-gear. Broughton’s core competencies today include long bed machining, wing skin sub-assembly, and wing assembly and equipping for the entire Airbus family of jets, and assembly of the Raytheon Hawker family of executive aircraft.

The Wing Makers as Kings of Flight

Arguably, the wing makers are the kings of flight. No matter what else is done, what innovations are introduced, or technologies discovered and deployed in any area of the aircraft, the wing defines the aircraft. Both sites are forever pushing the frontiers of quality design and manufacture, enabling bigger aircraft with ever greater capacity to be built through increasing the efficiency of the wing, without compromising the aircraft's viability to operate in the world's key markets.

New technologies for manufacture, and new production techniques too, have been benchmarked and developed, and are coming on stream and proving their worth at Broughton, for example, for the company's single aisle jets, Airbus has recently introduced the concept of a moving assembly line after benchmarking with the Nissan car plant in Sunderland. Other tools for work balancing have been learned from Toyota. Many other techniques and technologies have been developed in-house.

Challenges of the 'Super Jumbo'

But the greatest opportunities - and the greatest challenges - come with new aircraft and, across Airbus, the focus now is on the A380, the wide bodied, double-decker 'super-jumbo' on which the company is pinning its hopes and plans for the future.

The A380, when it enters service in 2006, will be the largest passenger aircraft in the world and has been designed to meet an anticipated doubling of air transport demand in the next 15 years, and trebling in the next 22. Air cargo demand is set to rise even faster. The A380 is designed to carry more passengers or freight, further, more economically and with reduced emissions than the existing standard, the 747 'jumbos'. And it will be capable of operating with significantly less noise, and using less fuel than the 747s.

It's not hard to see the attraction, for both passenger and freight operators, and this is borne out by advance orders; eleven major airlines and leasing companies have ordered 129 aircraft to date, with Singapore Airlines scheduled to receive the first aircraft in 2006.

more in Part 2 >>

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