{"id":1015,"date":"2006-07-02T15:53:26","date_gmt":"2006-07-02T20:53:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/get-off-the-bus\/"},"modified":"2006-07-02T15:53:26","modified_gmt":"2006-07-02T20:53:26","slug":"get-off-the-bus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/get-off-the-bus","title":{"rendered":"Get off the bus"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Airbus problems I mentioned two weeks ago<\/a> have gotten worse. According to this BizWeek article<\/a> and this followup news item<\/a>, executives at Airbus and EADS, its parent company, are getting the axe due to utter incompetence in keeping on top of the A380’s production.<\/p>\n

[Airbus sales exec John] Leahy says that until this spring, managers on the plant floor downplayed the problem. “If you asked any one department, they’d say, ‘I’m a little bit behind, but we’re going to catch up,'” he says. But Airbus executives were concerned enough to ask the consulting firm of McKinsey & Co. in April to examine the problem. It was McKinsey’s report, in early June, that triggered the EADS announcement.<\/p>\n

Yet others say the situation is no surprise, because Airbus’s corporate culture openly discourages employees from alerting managers to potential problems. “If you tell them bad news, they simply don’t listen,” says Andrew Walker, a former top engineer at the factory in Broughton, Wales, where the A380’s wings are built. “No one dares tell a high executive that something isn’t possible, because he risks losing his job,” says a local union leader at the Toulouse factory who asked for anonymity.<\/p>\n

That fear could explain why Airbus failed to grasp the severity of the problem sooner, even though the company had similar problems in the 1990s with long-range versions of its A340 aircraft.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Make mine Boeing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Airbus problems I mentioned two weeks ago have gotten worse. According to this BizWeek article and this followup news item, executives at Airbus and EADS, its parent company, are getting the axe due to utter incompetence in keeping on top of the A380’s production. [Airbus sales exec John] Leahy says that until this spring, … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Get off the bus”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1015","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-travel"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4C7K-gn","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":991,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/short-bus","url_meta":{"origin":1015,"position":0},"title":"Short Bus","author":"Gil","date":"June 16, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"Last week, I had a little ramble about Boeing's manufacturing issues with the 787 Dreamliner. This week, it's Airbus' turn to get raked over the coals, as its gigantor-plane, the A380, is going to have shipping delays because of wiring problems. Airbus' stock got hammered for this, and now there\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "travel"","block_context":{"text":"travel","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/travel"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4464,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/airbus","url_meta":{"origin":1015,"position":1},"title":"Airbus","author":"Gil","date":"September 14, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"Here's a picture from the bus-stop around 6:30 a.m., after I dropped my wife off.","rel":"","context":"In "suburbs"","block_context":{"text":"suburbs","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/suburbs"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1141,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/youre-it","url_meta":{"origin":1015,"position":2},"title":"You’re IT!","author":"Gil","date":"October 8, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"This conversation from BusinessWeek explores the question, \"Does IT Matter?\" This article from BusinessWeek about the software problems leading to Airbus' $6.1 billion wiring problem answers the question pretty handily, I think. Both of our flights for this trip were on Boeings (767-200 and 757-200), and they were pretty smooth,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Big Business"","block_context":{"text":"Big Business","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/big-business"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1199,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/unrequired-reading-nov-10-2006","url_meta":{"origin":1015,"position":3},"title":"Unrequired Reading: Nov. 10, 2006","author":"Gil","date":"November 10, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"As you know, I've been interested in the development of the new Airbus A380 (the really big plane) and all the production problems Airbus has been having with it. The fact that I fly between 25,000 and 35,000 miles each year is a key contributor to this interest. Barbara Peterson\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Architecture"","block_context":{"text":"Architecture","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/architecture"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1056,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/present-success-is-no-indication-of-future-failure","url_meta":{"origin":1015,"position":4},"title":"Present success is no indication of future failure","author":"Gil","date":"July 29, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"In the New Yorker, James Surowiecki tells us to take a chill pill over Airbus' current struggles. In 2003, Business Week declared that Boeing was \u00c3\u00a2\u00e2\u201a\u00ac\u00c5\u201cchoking on Airbus\u00c3\u00a2\u00e2\u201a\u00ac\u00e2\u201e\u00a2 fumes,\u00c3\u00a2\u00e2\u201a\u00ac\u00c2\u009d and warned that Boeing\u00c3\u00a2\u00e2\u201a\u00ac\u00e2\u201e\u00a2s \u00c3\u00a2\u00e2\u201a\u00ac\u00c5\u201cslip to No. 2 could become permanent.\u00c3\u00a2\u00e2\u201a\u00ac\u00c2\u009d The problem with such prognostications is that they infer basic\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "basketball"","block_context":{"text":"basketball","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/sports\/basketball"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1365,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/unrequired-reading-mar-2-2007","url_meta":{"origin":1015,"position":5},"title":"Unrequired Reading: Mar. 2, 2007","author":"Gil","date":"March 2, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"A week off has left me laden with uncommented-upon links, dear reader! Enjoy It's only Revolutions: The books come with introductions by Slavoj \u00c3\u2026\u00c2\u00bdi\u00c3\u2026\u00c2\u00beek, a Slovenian psychoanalyst and social theorist, who assaults both the English language and the intelligence of those who actually manage to figure out what he\u00c3\u00a2\u00e2\u201a\u00ac\u00e2\u201e\u00a2s saying.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Adventures in Gin"","block_context":{"text":"Adventures in Gin","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/adventures-in-gin"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1015","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1015"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1015\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1015"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1015"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1015"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}