Airbus Aircraft Charters, Sales and Leasing Services

Airbus is one of the largest aircraft manufacturers in the world and is the largest and most prominent division of the European multinational aerospace company known as the Airbus Group. The company is headquartered in Toulouse, France, but also has several manufacturing facilities in the United Kingdom, Germany, and Spain. Throughout these four countries, Airbus employs over 63,000 people in addition to its subsidiaries in the US, Japan, India, and China.

History

Airbus Industrie was a combination of the most innovative and successful European aviation groups, meant to gain a competitive advantage against American giants including Boeing, Lockheed, and McDonnell Douglas. Although European aviation companies were innovative and successful to a degree, model after model experienced relatively short production runs. Eventually European aircraft manufacturers realized the necessity of collaboration to compete against the United States. This new European consortium determined that the reasons for America's dominance in aviation were due to several factors. The United States land mass encouraged air travel to be the preferred method of travel and the invigorated wartime production during World War II left the US with an extremely finely-tuned, efficient, and profitable aeronautical industry.

Airbus's first project to be launched was the A300. This model was both a figurative and literal representative of the European aeronautical industry's unity and cooperation in a joint project. France manufactured the aircraft's cockpit and flight controls, Rolls-Royce manufactured the engines, Hawker Siddeley manufactured the wings, Germany manufactured most of the fuselage, the Dutch produced the flaps and spoilers, and Spain manufactured the horizontal tailplane. Although the A300's initial level of success was lukewarm, it was upon this foundation that future successes were built. Once it became clear that Airbus was more than a temporary collaboration, its four owning partners entered delicate negotiations, eventually emerging as Airbus SAS, a permanent aircraft manufacturer with the invested efforts of many different European nations rising to compete as one of the largest and most prominent aircraft manufacturers in the world. Find out more about Airbus on Wikipedia.

Types of Airbus Jets Available in the Market