The decision by the former European Aeronautic Defence and Space Co. (EADS) to rebrand itself in favor of its marquis aircraft brand, Airbus, will make it easier for the company to market itself to the United States government, the head of Airbus Group in North America said recently.
Under EADS it was “difficult” to represent the company on Capitol Hill and it was “almost a threatening name,” Allan McArtor, CEO of Airbus Group, Inc., which is the name for Airbus Group’s U.S. division. Now, McArtor said, when the company goes to Congress to discuss Airbus Helicopters or Airbus Space and Defence, they “recognize the name.”
Still, McArtor said it will take a few months to educate Congress effectively about the Airbus brand. McArtor and Airbus Group Chief Tom Enders discussed the company’s rebranding, which took effect on Jan. 1, and its status and plans in the overall U.S. aerospace and defense market at a breakfast the company hosted for media. McArtor took over Airbus Group, Inc., on March 1 for Sean O’Keefe, who continues to focus on recovering from injuries suffered in a plane crash four years ago that killed former Alaskan Sen. Ted Stevens (R).
In addition to the rebranding, Airbus also simplified its operating structure, putting its military aircraft, space and communications businesses all within a new division, Airbus Defence & Space.
The Airbus brand gives the company a “vehicle that we can use to tell that story about the whole portfolio of products from space and satellites and missiles and fighters and tactical turboprops and helicopters, and, of course, airplanes,” McArtor said. “So what I’m going to try to do is create the same level of confidence in the rest of the portfolio of products that people have in the Airbus airplane family of airplanes.”
Airbus Group’s Airbus commercial airplane division competes globally with U.S. aerospace and defense giant Boeing [BA] for the majority of large passenger aircraft orders. Airbus Group, which posted sales last year of about $82 billion, does over two-thirds of its business in the commercial aircraft sector. The company’s defense business makes up about 20 percent of sales, Enders said.
Despite shrinking defense budgets, the United States still represents the largest defense market worldwide and Airbus Group wants “to be opportunistic about being able to take our share of even a smaller pie” with a range of competitive products it has to offer, McArtor said, highlighting the Army’s UH-72A Lakota light utility helicopter, which has been delivering on-time and on-budget from the start. He said the 300th Lakota will be delivered to the Army in a few weeks.
At one time the former EADS had been actively seeking to expand in the United States through a combination of organic growth and acquisitions. The company has put acquisitions on the back-burner as it focuses on expansion by winning new programs and leveraging existing ones, like the Lakota, which McArtor said has room to grow as the installed base gets larger.
In the immediate future, Airbus will be expanding its commercial footprint in the United States, which is the largest customer of the company’s line of single-aisle passenger planes. After losing to Boeing several years ago in a bid to build the next aerial refueling tanker for the Air Force—a bid that the former EADS won until a successful protest by Boeing resulted in a reopening of the competition—the company had to figure out what to do with a facility it had acquired in Mobile, Ala., where it had hoped to build the tanker.
Enders said the obvious choice was to make single aisle planes. McArtor added that plans to ready the facility for commercial aircraft production are on-budget and schedule with tooling and equipment expected to begin being installed later this year with the first aircraft slated for delivery in mid-2016. The plan will be to get production to four aircraft per month with the capacity to build up to eight monthly, he said.