Photo by: Keith Campbell
Airbus Military president and CEO Domingo Ureña-Raso was not unhappy that he left major A400M work packages with South African companies after the country cancelled its order for eight of the aircraft in November 2009.
"I don't regret taking the decision to keep work in South Africa," he told Engineering News Online on Wednesday night, at a company function in Seville, Spain.
He pointed out that South Africa had had the right to cancel its order because the company has been unable to make contractual schedules. However, he believed that that decision had been premature.
Ureña-Raso also pointed out that some would have argued that, with South Africa no longer buying the aircraft, he should have pulled the work packages – placed with private-sector enterprise Aerosud and State-owned Denel Aerostructures (DAe) – out of the country.
Aerosud produces mainly secondary structures for the aircraft, such as the nose fuselage linings, the cargo hold linings, cockpit linings, cockpit rigid bulkhead and the aircraft galleys, but also the wingtips. DAe makes major primary structures, namely the wing/fuselage fairings and the centre fuselage top shells (each aircraft has two of these, one each in front and behind of the centre wing box). "Denel was in very deep troubles [in 2009]," he cited. "Denel today is doing fantastically well."
Ureña-Raso, however, hopes that South Africa remembers this. "Now, if the [strategic transport] requirement re-emerges, I'd like to be part of that requirement. It wouldn't be fair if a company which showed faith in South Africa wasn't involved in resolving the requirement."
* Keith Campbell attended the Airbus Military Trade Media Briefing 2013 in Seville, Spain, as a guest of the company.