Although in service for almost five years there are some persisting problems with the Airbus A380 world's largest passenger planes. With 257 orders and 77 planes in service, it is still unclear whether it will be a commercial success. Some of the issues that they are dealing with are as follows:
1) Due to the wrong kind of engineering software, the airplanes have been experiencing some problems with the inside wirings. The company had to spend billions of dollars and couple of years to correct this issue.
2) Wing cracks on the new A380 superjumbo which caused the grounding of every one of the jets has been blamed on British engineering.
Airbus traced the cause of small cracks developing on the wings of some of the £250million double-decker A380s to a small component engineered in its design center in Filton, Bristol. It is due to the choice of a less flexible aluminum alloy used to make the wing brackets, as well as the way in which fasteners are put through holes, and the stresses involved in fitting portions of the wing together. The manufacturer has been forced to order a global recall fix for the offending aluminum brackets which hold the wing’s skin to the structure. The wings are the only part of the cutting-edge A380e which are built in the UK. Airbus employs 9,500 people in its Filton design center and manufacturing complex in Broughton, Wales. The wings are then taken by sea to be assembled in Toulouse from parts built across Europe. It is feared the issue could cost Airbus more than £80million in compensation.
Overall, the cracks are the result of new technologies mixed with insufficient design controls. Airbus engineers have determined an altered design for the wing that would use different materials. Once safety authorities have approved the change, Airbus can alter manufacturing of the wings in Broughton, Wales, which will hopefully ensure that aircrafts coming off the production line by January 2014 will be free of the defect.
Planes delivered from now until the beginning of 2014 still contain the defect, and require both short-term fixes if cracks develop, as well as the permanent repair that can take eight weeks per plane. Airlines taking delivery before 2014 will have the choice between an immediate, permanent fix once the planes come off production lines, or repairs in stages during required maintenance checks after about two and four years. Providing this fix is turning out to be extremely expensive for Airbus.
2) With split production at different locations (build the plane in France and then send them to Hamburg, Germany to do the interiors), the planning activities have become complex. Further, this requires doing things in sequence (as compared to parallel processing of production activities as has been the practice for manufacturing the A330, which is completely built in Toulouse, France). This results in higher cost and longer lead time. This situation is partly political since France and Germany are big partners within the parent European Aeronautic Defence and Space Company N.V. (EADS)- the global pan-European aerospace and defence corporation and a leading defence and military contractor worldwide. Airbus is thinking of bringing some of the inside work back upstream to streamline the production flow. However, this leads to sensitive discussions of labor unions and governments.
3) Initially, before the problems surfaced, Airbus said that they will need to sell 270 planes to break-even. Subsequently, this number was revised to 420. With ongoing problems, in recent times the company has stopped providing an estimate of their break-even number. The fact remains that there is demand for the planes, but it is unclear what price airlines will be willing to pay. It is one of the most expensive planes to buy and it costs substantial amount of money to do the inside. Hence, to make money, airlines will need to really use them in full capacity. But, whether there is demand in the market for so many big planes is not clear. According the Airbus, high level of congestion faced by airports creates demand for bigger airplanes to reduce the airport congestion and resulting inefficiencies. If passengers would prefer these large planes that connect big airports instead of choosing smaller planes connecting relatively smaller neighboring airports to avoid airport congestion, this could indeed result in higher demand for Airbus A380. At this point, It is unclear how varying plane sizes, airport congesion, varying airport choices, and passenger preferences would eventually play out.