Yet another round in the airliner wars. The most interesting part is actually the Popular Mechanic's piece on what went wrong with the A380 as an engineering and business problem.

The A380 will fly I have no doubt. Too many people have invested too much money in it to allow it to flop completely. But it may never earn a single euro for Airbus, or earn money very very late.

It appears they made a number of critical errors. Mostly they began with the most demanding customers, the Emirates and Singapore Airlines - who wanted a luxury aircraft with extra amenities. This put too much of a load on the wiring system. They also changed from copper to aluminium to save weight. In short they overloaded their engineering team.

The problem now is time. They have given Boeing two critical years to catch up. The *new* 747-800 seems like it's close to the A380 and will be flying near to the same time. Boeing has the Dreamliner coming out with 50% composite materials. If Boeing can deliver that with minimal delays then they will be coining money while Airbus is still bleeding from the A380 and waiting for the A350 to come out. Right smack in the middle of the 'middle-size' jet segment that Airbus had made their own.

Boeing will probably start their own 'superliner' project at some point & the A380 delay can only help that project. (Onr analyst seemed to be saying that the A380 would be obsolote almost before it began flying.

If I were a French or German I'd be very concerned about the potential politicisation of Airbus. Both the French and German governments have expressed their intention to buy larger shares in Airbus; production and business decisions could end up done for political reasons, giving work to one country or another. That would be very bad for Airbus. It may turn into one of those subsidised national champions rather than a world-beating engineering company.