A380's Wiring Fix for Just One Plane, Not Whole Fleet

HAMBURG, Germany -- Airbus on Friday toned down expectations of an immediate solution to all the technical glitches that delayed its A380 superjumbo project, saying wiring problems had been solved for the first aircraft only.

A German news report last week said that Airbus had solved the wiring installation problems that delayed A380 deliveries by an average two years and drove the plane maker into the red.

Aviation-watchers and some investors cheered the report, saying it closed the worst chapter in Airbus' 30-year history.

Gerhard Puttfarcken, head of Airbus' German operations, said Airbus had passed a key milestone in completing wiring for the first A380 to be delivered to Singapore Airlines in October and handling the transition to cabin installation. But work was still going on to solve the long-term issues.

Airbus expects to start building soon a common design platform between its main French and German plants. It said recently this new software would be operational from the 26th plane onward.

"We are creating the conditions so that in future there will be one common platform from all the sites," Puttfarcken told visiting French journalists when asked to clarify the report. EADS unit Airbus has 16 sites including seven in Germany.

Engineers found last year that wiring designed in Hamburg could not be fitted into A380s on the assembly line in Toulouse. Experts blamed the failure of Airbus Hamburg to keep up with Toulouse by installing the latest 3D design software.

That in part reflected the four-nation plane maker's incomplete integration, according to a diagnosis carried out by outside industrialist Christian Streiff, who served briefly as Airbus CEO last year and launched its Power8 restructuring plan.

The A380 backlogs cost EADS some 5 billion euros ($6.45 billion) in sacrificed profits and triggered a political storm in both France and Germany, where most of Airbus's 55,000 staff are based. Britain and Spain also have Airbus factories.

The first A380 to enter service is considered important for the A380 program because the way in which the 300 miles of cables are wired and other systems installed will be a baseline for future production.

Having been assembled in Toulouse, it is now under wraps in Hamburg ready for commercially sensitive cabin features that Singapore Airlines has commissioned for its inaugural service.

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