A natural fit

In a Q&A session, Mike Richardson meets with Philippe Balducchi, CEO of the Airbus Bombardier partnership to hear more about this significant new collaboration between Airbus and Bombardier on what is now known as the Airbus A220.

A funny thing happened in the run-up to the last Farnborough Airshow and you could have knocked me down with a feather. In a truly historic moment, Airbus decided to announce the unveiling of its new A220-100 and A220-300 – the aircraft formerly known as the Bombardier C Series.

The A220 family comprises two models, the A220-100 and A220-300, formerly Bombardier’s C Series (CS100 and CS300). The aircraft are fully optimised for the 100 to 150 seat market and are said to perfectly complement Airbus’ existing A320neo family.

With my head still spinning and aware that a similar Boeing/Embraer aircraft merger was in the offering, I took myself off the Airbus press chalet to meet Philippe Balducchi, CEO of the Airbus Bombardier partnership.

Q: How well have the teams merged their different cultures and were there any challenges?

“It’s still early days and it’s only since July 1^st that we officially became a team. We have been working together since October 2017 to establish a structure and get ourselves organised. It’s apparent that there is a natural fit in many different dimensions, particularly the natural family fit of the aircraft. It’s no coincidence, because we focus on the market just below the larger single aisle. We have a common objective in the market, and when people in teams have a common goal, they are all working in line to achieve the same result. So, it’s still early days, but it feels really good. It’s very important that the two teams align and works as a single performing team.”

Q: Just how complementary are the Airbus and Bombardier team members and their ideas?

“A lot of thought went into structuring the team and this included looking at who has the best skill-sets and abilities. The synergies that Airbus brings is in procurement, which will be very important for the programme’s success, sales and marketing. Airbus is a huge organisation with an extensive network, which will help strengthen our team going forward. It has brought in key people that have the requisite skill-sets. What is also very relevant to the new leadership is the logistics, manufacturing, the ramp-up and the scale of Airbus in terms of how many aircraft it produces compared to Bombardier. So, there is a great synergy and leverage that we can learn and benefit from. It’s really exciting and it’s like a goldmine of knowledge, lessons learnt, practices and people – it’s perfect.”

Q: Do you see any changes to existing Bombardier supply chain?

“We have three main priorities: sell aircraft, ramp up production and reduce cost. All our suppliers will need to be cost-competitive. Our first step is to work with them to build up the production rate and we have been very clear: we have to reduce the cost structure of the aircraft. We are working with our current supply chain to achieve this, but we must also achieve the cost reduction on our side as well. Everyone must be competitive, if not, we will need to look at alternatives and that is what anybody in the business would do right now.”

Q: Has either team learnt anything special from each other?

“The key difference is that Bombardier is a smaller company and quite lean, so our people typically have a larger scope - just because of the size of the organisation. However, Airbus has a very deep knowledge and expertise in many areas, so it’s actually very complementary. The team is working hard to take the best of both of both worlds and build a new culture with new ways of working. There are more opportunities to work faster and be more responsive than within Airbus because of its size and scale. The team has gained Airbus’ deep knowledge, which would have taken years to acquire. It’s exciting and very rare among aerospace OEMs to have this type of opportunity.”

Q: Is Airbus excited about Bombardier Belfast’s advance wing manufacturing techniques and will it be something that they can leverage on in going forward?

“I can’t speculate on the future, but Airbus has done some deep reviews of the Belfast site and has been very impressed with the wing manufacturing technology. It’s a different technology to what Airbus is currently using, and it has found the facility to be very innovative. Clearly, there are opportunities and again it will be based on the lean strategy and most importantly, the cost structure.”

Q: Do you foresee any of the existing production facilities moving or combining with other established Airbus facilities?

“We have been very public about our plans, and Mirabel, Québec is the A220s primary Final Assembly Line serving the world market. Mobile, Alabama is starting A220 production in 2020 and will focus on the US market. We have already launched the tooling for Mobile and we are in the final planning stages with the layout of the factory.”

www.airbus.com