AF 447 - A shot in the foot

Last Friday French BEA published another interim report on AF447, the A330-200, which crashed more than a year ago in the South Atlantic killing all 228 people on board. For anybody, who is familiar with aircraft accident investigation, it is no surprise that the investigators are still far from being able to fully understand all factors, which contributed to this tragedy. 

However, the day before Alonso Fernández, President of Airbus’ flight test division, has given an interview to French news magazine "Le Point", where he expressed his view on the accident: It’s been the pilots, not the aircraft. Case closed.

This interview is a shocking deviation from the well-established rules of aircraft accident investigation. One of them is that the airline, the manufacturer and the air traffic control stay absolutely quiet until the final release has been published.  Breaking those rules as Airbus did is not just disgusting. It is shortsighted. And it is against the interests of the entire air transport industry and the flying public.

• Accident investigation is not about finding the one to blame, but understanding what chain of events led to an crash and what factors contributed – technical problems, aircraft systems architecture, human factors, training, ATC, weather. It’s a highly complex task and there are few accidents where the search for the cause led to a quick and simple answer. Commercial aviation is a global system of collective learning. The painstaking and unbiased analysis of all major mishaps is without comparison in any other industry. Without it the air transport system would never have achieved the high level of safety it has today.

• In recent years we have seen several cases, where accident investigators had to defend their privileged access to the crash site and all kinds of evidence against overambitious prosecutors and against aggressive lawyers looking for arguments to support their multimillion dollar claims. Just remember the crash of the Concorde in Paris or the collision of GOL 1907 with an Embraer business jet over the Brazilian jungle. The key argument of the aviation community against this kind of interference has always been the overarching public interest to increase flight safety even further. How strong will this argument be in the future, when a major player like Airbus is trying to exploit the investigation for his own interests like in this case?

And there is a moral aspect as well. When so many lives have been lost, our industry owes the victims and their next of kin to honestly determine the cause of the accident in order to prevent it from happening again. 

How can you learn from what has gone wrong, when you don’t accept the possibility, that there might be contributing factors on your side, too? No matter what the final conclusions of the investigators will be, finger pointing towards dead pilots isn’t the appropriate answer.

And let's never forget: When you are pointing fingers at others, there are always three fingers pointing back to you. 

Additon 12 Aug 2011

The behaviour of Air France unacceptable as well. BTW: AF/KLM is said to be poised to order 50 A350s. Will be interesting to see, where that one goes.

Disappointing but smart

The news, which came out of Seattle yesterday, was a clear disappointment for all those who had expected the launch of a 737 successor.  It’s not the big step towards technology leadership in this market segment many want to make. But together with all the 737 performance tweaks already under way, it keeps the race open. And more important - it is enough to prevent Airbus from turning the NEO into a real cash machine. A re-engined 737 might be just an interim solution, from a strategic point of view it is money well spent.

When announcing Q1 earnings in April Hans-Peter Ring, CFO of EADS, said, that he sees the thin profit margin of Airbus gradually improving over the next years. One reason he mentioned was, that he expects fewer low margin aircraft rolling of the A320 production line in the future. Never before I have heard EADS or Airbus publicly admitting, that outselling Boeing's 737 over the last years required the willingness to give the higher discount. 

If the A320 family were the indisputable superior aircraft John Leahy always claims, it would be the other way round. Boeing would have to trade profit for market share. But no indications for that! Earnings reports from Seattle have been showing a constantly high operational performance during the last years – besides self-inflicted damage like strike and one-time charges due to the troubled 787 program.

Another sign that the real life might contradict the polished marketing story is Air Berlin. Airbus scored a big win, when this once die-hard Boeing 737 customer ordered 60 A320 in 2004. However, it went largely unnoticed, that CEO Achim Hunold has ordered 68 737-800s since - but no further A320s.

No doubt, the LEAP-X engines, the various performance improvements and its outstanding new Sky Interior cabin make the 737 a tough competitor to the A320NEO – if not the superior aircraft. Therefor it is not unfounded speculation that Airbus got the higher portion of the American Airlines deal because John Leahy was willing to throw in more deal sweeteners than his Boeing counterpart. Leahy never would accept getting the smaler piece of such a deal regardless what the price is.

But “historic orders” always come with a great deal of pain for the finance guys. Airbus had already several mega deal this year. So the stunning sales success of the A320neo could mean that Hans-Peter Ring has to abandon any hope that Airbus on day could reach Boeing-like profitability.