Airbus lowers national flags in new structure

Airbus, buoyed by new plane orders as it tries to close the gap on resurgent Boeing, unveiled a leaner management on Wednesday aimed at uprooting nationalist rivalries inside the European planemaker.

Sweeping aside national power structures dating back to its birth as a consortium, Airbus said it would run most operations and multibillion-dollar programmes centrally and halt a chronic overlap between decision-making in different countries.

"This is a completely new in Airbus," Airbus President Louis Gallois said in a joint interview with a group of reporters.

"I don't want to see flags in the company. We don't want to talk about Germany but Bremen or Hamburg; not France but Saint-Nazaire or Nantes. We have to create an Airbus spirit overcoming a national spirit," he said.

The move curtails the power of country chiefs, whose jobs will be reduced to mainly representative ones - although they will keep responsibility for sensitive labour union talks.

Production will be organised under four cross-border themes.

The streamlining initiative came as French and German leaders firmed up plans for a joint visit to Airbus headquarters in Toulouse, France, where engineers from both countries are working to repair problems on the flagship A380 superjumbo.

A two-year production delay on the world's largest airliner brought relations on industrial policy between France and Germany to one of their lowest ebbs last year and sparked plans for 10,000 job cuts, which will also affect Britain and Spain.

The setback was blamed partly on the refusal of French and German factories to use the same type of design software.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy said he and German Chancellor Angela Merkel would visit Airbus headquarters in mid-July as part of a bid to solve the problems.

"I am very happy to see we are on the same wavelength on almost all subjects, notably bilateral issues," Mr Sarkozy told reporters after a meeting with the German chancellor at the G8 summit meeting in Germany.

"She confirmed she would come with me to the Airbus factories in Toulouse. That's very important, I think, to all Airbus workers," he said.

One of Mr Sarkozy's first acts on taking office last month was to visit Airbus to meet workers and unions, who are fighting to water down the company's restructuring plan.

German Airbus workers staged wildcat strikes on Wednesday. Airbus is also selling all or part of six plants and has received interest from a total of 14 potential buyers, a source familiar with the matter said.

France and Germany wrestled over the location of job losses and the placement of future ones when the Airbus restructuring plan, dubbed Power8, was announced in February, and the row spilled over to rules for running Airbus parent EADS.

Mr Sarkozy has refused to intervene in the job cuts but called for renegotiation of a Franco-German pact among shareholders in EADS, which limits the day-to-day influence of the French state.

EADS was forced last month to set aside plans for a deferred capital increase to raise money in convertible bonds, because it would have meant addressing deeper differences over the pact.

France has suggested EADS may need new industrial backers to replace core shareholders Lagardere, the French media firm, and German carmaker DaimlerChrysler, which have both reduced their stakes. But neither wants to be diluted just yet.

The French treasury owns 15 per cent of EADS. With attention focusing on the order battle with Boeing at the Paris air show on June 18-22, Ireland's Aer Lingus meanwhile gave the European company a boost with an order for 12 aircraft valued at $2.4 billion.

The former state carrier said it will take six A330-300s and six A350 XWB Airbus airplanes, with deliveries to start in 2009.

The lightweight A350, due to be built from 2013, is Airbus's next model after the A380 but is lagging far behind pre-sales of Boeing's similar 787 Dreamliner, which starts flying next year.

The two models are battling head-to-head for a significant order from Dubai's Emirates Airlines, while Australia Qantas's low-cost subsidiary Jetstar said on Wednesday it was considering a big Airbus plane order.