Airbus A350: The first programme in the history of aeronautics to be delivered on-time. Or is it?

Fabrice Brégier, CEO of Airbus, is proud. And with good reason. Here are some of his statements to the press from this morning.

I feel a great sense of satisfaction and pride. I would like to congratulate the Airbus teams, they have not drifted off course one inch over the last two years. All the milestones were passed on time: assembly of the first aircraft, test flight in June 2013 and the various steps in the flight test campaign. Everything went perfectly despite some surprises that we managed to deal with. These results validate our method which is to advance as quickly as possible without taking any risks. This is the first programme in the history of aeronautics that has managed to stick so closely to its timetable.

Airbus demonstrates that it has changed with two aircraft – A350 and A320neo – rolling out on time. This augurs well for the future.

A350 is the symbol of a new Airbus. In 2006, when we launched the A350, Airbus was in crisis. It had to cope with the problems of the A380
programme. We have learnt from our mistakes and turned our weaknesses into strengths. We challenged ourselves. It was out of the question that we should go through the torments of the A380 programme again.

When you lose the notion of humility, you’re very quickly caught up by technical issues and the competition. The success of a programme depends on the people and their values. I chose Didier Evrard whose experience in the area of managing complex programmes I was familiar with for having seen him at work when I was running MBDA. I got him to come to Airbus and I entrusted him with the A350 right from the outset. More than 7,000 engineers got down to work under his management, with courage, with transparency and tenacity.

We are very proud of the A350. The success of this type of programme – one with such a great degree of technological complexity – is rare in industry.

Impressive. Except when we look at the press from 2006.

July 18, 2006 – Airbus used the backdrop of the Farnborough Air Show today to present a new family of aircraft, the A350 XWB, for Extra Wide Body, which will offer increased range, more speed, enhanced passenger comfort and improved economics and efficiency.

Entry into service for the A350-900 is foreseen for 2012.

Wait. That means that the A350 is two years late, compared to an initial development time of six years–from 2006 to 2012.

That’s 30% longer than initially planned.

Instead of being a historical first, the A350 programme development seems to be yet another instance of an ever larger sample that demonstrates planning fallacy and over optimism–two well documented biases in behavioral economics.

Author: E. Dib #
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