Industrial Nervousness mounting
07:52 GMT, March 5, 2009 defpro.com | In a recent interview with Reuters, Thales Chairman and CEO Denis Ranque said that the company will not make any financial contribution to help EADS unit Airbus reduce its financial exposure for the troubled A400M military transport aircraft programme.
Airbus is facing several serious problems causing huge delays and extra costs in the programme and is now trying to win suppliers and customer nations to share more risk. Some of these technical problems are also in the electronic elements build by Thales, such as the navigation system and the Flight Management System (FMS).
Ranque said to reporters during a news conference that the company would not make a contribution as part of any deal to ease the financial burden for EADS. He also said that EADS had received significant cash advances from the A400M customer countries to develop the aircraft, but had failed to pass any of this on to suppliers like Thales.
"EADS has kept all the cash. They are being financed like a military programme but we are being financed like a civil programme. We have not received any cash from EADS," he said to reporters.
The difference between civil and military programmes is that in civil contracts, suppliers tend to develop technology at their own expenses, sometimes in return for a share of revenues while military contracts often involve lower risk for companies since the governments supports both the development as well as the production of the system.
EADS has however likened its own contract for the A400M to a civil contract rather than a military one, Reuters reported. That is because the final price was set in stone and cannot be altered to absorb rises in development or/and production costs.
According to a French Senate report, which was translated and published by defpro.com (see: http://www.defpro.com/daily/details/249/), EADS has already received 5 billion Euro from the customer nations. According to M. Ranque, Thales last year took 80 million Euro in A400M charges.
The uncommonly sharp comments by Denis Ranque seem to reflect a mounting nervousness in industrial circles as the momentous deadline for a final decision on the fate of the A400M programme is rapidly approaching. The OCCAr Agency, which is managing the programme on behalf of the customer nations, is due to present its own report on the status of the programme in the next few days. And by 1st April, as the delay in the aircraft s first flight reaches 14 months beyond the contractual date, the customer nations will be legally empowered to collectively or individually abandon the programme and ask EADS to return their money.
http://www.defpro.com/daily/details/261/
ถึงแม้ว่าโครงการพัฒนา บ.ลำเลียงทางทหารใบพัด4เครื่องยนตร์ขนาดใหญ่แบบ A400M ของ EADS นั้นจะได้รับความสนใจในการจัดหาจากหลายๆประเทศเช่นในASEANก็มีมาเลเซียเป็นต้น
แต่จากสภาวะเศรษฐกิจในปัจจุบันและความล่าช้าในการพัฒนา จากการสัมภาษณ์ประธานของบริษัท Thales ซึ่งร่วมพัฒนาในส่วนระบบนำร่องและระบบควบคุมการบินว่า Thales จะไม่แบบกความความเสี่ยงด้านการเงินร่วมกับ EADS ในการพัฒนา A400M ต่อไป
ซึ่งนั้นทำให้อนาคตของ A400M ดูจะน่ากังวลอยู่ครับ
