Lets look again at that list:
– A400 a failure ? Why? It was late and over budget, true, so was the C-17, so was the C-130J, so is the Kawasaki C-2, the Russians couldnt even get a new generation cargo aircraft! The aircraft is being produced now, its starting to be fielded now, god know hows how manny will be built. Its too early to call that program a success or not.
– The A340 a failure? That particular “failure” has more export orders by almost 1/3 then any other European commercial jet before Airbus came along. It broke even, its development was made together with the A330, it got a profit and 377 were built. The only place were that´s a failure is in Boeing´s land, a particular place were the Europeans simply couldnt compete before a particular Company appeared.
– A380 – Another one wich is still being built, its entirely possible that its development costs actualy gets even, its not obviously the massive success that was hoped, but its too soon to call it a failure
– Tiger and NH90 – The Tiger is no way a failure, the NH90 has an helluv lot of problems
– Ariane V – That competition finnaly got its act together in recent years (congratulations to SpaceX ) doesnt mean that the chaps who actually send more things into space in 2014, 2015 and 2016 are in any way a failure.
What you are doing is calling “failure” to programs using an yardstick, and the yardstick that you are using is… Airbus himself, had those programs being launched by any other European company and you would be calling them a sucess, because they have been built in numbers that no other European company has ever provided.
But its irrelevant what we think, there´s one particular number that smashes this entire argument. Airbus was formed in 1967 and from that date till June 2017 (half a century) it had delivered 10514 commercial aircrafts, its backlog (firm orders) is … 6771 airframes!
Recently i´ve read an article in wich it was stated that if we excluded the US aerospace industry, the Airbus commercial backlog was bigger than the combined value of the rest of world´s aerospace industry combined, commercial and military. Airbus is a massive success today, there´s absolutely no way of denying it.
Cheers
Airbus is massive failure. It has alot of imported components and material that dictate where it can be sold and since the R&D and labor is inefficient only airlines in states like China and Middleast can make it sustainable. It has distorted EU labor market and foreign policy.
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