Boeing warns Japanese partners against Airbus deal
Boeing warns Japanese partners against Airbus deal
TOKYO (AFP): Boeing Corp. warned its long-standing Japanese partners Tuesday against embracing the A380 superjumbo project being developed by fierce rival Airbus Industrie.
"We also have partners on projects and when you have partners, you expect them to work with you on that particular project and not on one that is directly competitive to that," Boeing chief Phil Condit said.
Condit was speaking in Tokyo a day after the European company gave a June deadline to Japanese industrial concerns to decide on whether they want to take part in building the world's biggest passenger plane.
Condit said Boeing was happy for its Japanese partners to arrange sub-contractual supply agreements with other companies.
"We have a lot of different suppliers that work for Boeing and Airbus and that's OK," the Boeing chief executive told a news conference.
But Boeing's Japanese partners should not enter into a risk- taking partnership that would exclude the U.S. giant, such as the A380 project, Condit said.
"I have a great deal of faith that they will make a good decision, and that the decision will be to work with us, as they have been for a very long time."
Airbus chief executive Noel Forgeard announced on Monday that companies such as Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Kawasaki Heavy Industries and Fuji Heavy Industries had until June to decide whether to take an 8.0 percent share in the A380 development program.
The European company already has 62 firm orders for its giant 555-seater airliner, and Forgeard warned that Japanese parts manufacturers risked missing out on a "historic" opportunity.
Condit said Boeing's strategy was "not to try to block Airbus."
"The strategy is to run a very good business -- and to run a good business, you need good partners," he said.
While the Seattle-based giant has given up trying to match the A380 with the 747X -- a stretched version of its aging mainstay of long-haul jumbo jet fleets -- it recently unveiled plans for the Sonic Cruiser, a smaller jet which will fly at just below the speed of sound.
Condit meanwhile repeated an assertion that there was not a sufficiently large market to make the A380 profitable, claiming that the time advantage and the diversification of air transport argued in favor of smaller, faster aircraft.
Boeing was currently assessing the potential market for the Sonic Cruiser, Condit said, and the next stage would be to establish a working group with the airlines to see what their needs are. If the project goes ahead, the Boeing chief said he expected the Japanese parts makers to come onboard.
"Japanese industry has been a major partner on our last two programs, the 767 and 777: I would expect that there is a very high probability they would be partners on this program," he said.