Another You Read It Here First

Bloomberg reports today that Airbus cut its A380 sales forecast this year to 20 from 30, but we reported this last week on our Corporate Website.

“No” to A350 aid

Bloomberg News reports that Airbus has asked for US$18 billion in financial aid for development of the A350 XWB. (Holy smokes, the price of things has gone up.) Here’s the report from The Seattle Times.

Boeing, predictably, doesn’t like the idea. Neither do we.

We’ve long been on record that we don’t like corporate welfare, however it’s masked. This includes launch aid, government loans, research & development funding, tax breaks or anything else. This applies to Boeing, Airbus, Bombardier, Embraer, the Chinese, Japanese and Russians.

Airbus says it wants the loans to have a level playing field for the A350 vs. the 787. Two of the three models are actually competitors to the Boeing 777. If one accepts the Airbus rationale at face value, then it’s aid request should be trimmed by two-thirds to in essence cover only the A350-800 (yes, we know the impossibility of segregating out the one model, but you get our point).

But whatever is done, we still don’t like it. Not for the reasons Boeing complains about. We just don’t like corporate welfare, period.