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EuroWire – September 2007
45
Airbus and Boeing
EADS rests its hopes for a
Pentagon tanker contract in Alabama
For EADS, the parent company of Europe’s Airbus, expanding its
sales of military aircraft to the US is of the first importance, given
its losses last year in the commercial aviation division and the
compensating profits in its military and space business. EADS’s
American strategy became very plain at the Paris air show in
June: intensive cultivation of officials of the state of Alabama.
The southerners’ influence in Washington would be useful in
helping Airbus win a $40 billion contract to provide 179 aerial
refuelling tankers to the US Air Force. To fulfil the contract,
Airbus has pledged to build a final assembly plant in Mobile,
Alabama, where it already has an engineering operation. The
new installation would create at least 1,500 jobs.
From all accounts the Alabama contingent at the air show
was more than receptive to the attentions of their French hosts,
who returned the compliment. Of his dozens of invitations
for the Saturday evening during the giant industry gathering,
Louis Gallois, the co-chief executive of EADS, chose to spend it
with members of the Mobile City Council of Alabama and the
Mobile Airport Authority. Governor Bob Riley of Alabama, master
of ceremonies at the party, said: “All I ask is that EADS be treated
fairly and that the tanker decision is based on merit. Don’t give
demerits to this company because they are associated with a
French plane.”
The ‘winner take all’ tanker contract, one of the biggest to be let
by the Pentagon in decades, will be decided and announced
before the end of the year. EADS’s competition is, of course,
Chicago-based Boeing, America’s second-largest military supplier
and a very practiced Washington hand. Boeing officials have said
that their Air Force tanker work, if they win the contract, would
be spread over 40 states.
In other news of Airbus, TAM, Brazil’s largest airline as
determined by the number of passengers carried, has agreed
to purchase 26 Airbus planes for around $5.4 billion to
expand international routes. The airline, based in São Paulo,
said it has signed a deal to buy 22 Airbus A350s outright
and secured an option to buy ten more; it is also exercising
its option to buy four A330s for delivery in 2010 and 2011.
TAM operates direct flights to Paris, London, Milan, New York,
and Miami.
Dorothy Fabian – USA Editor
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