The first A320 stamped "Made in China" has rolled out of the factory Airbus opened in Tianjin. It is the first time a major manufacturer has fully assembled an airliner in China, a major landmark for the country's rapidly growing aviation industry.
Hoping to satiate China's voracious appetite for passenger airplanes, production at the factory, pictured above and called the Final Assembly Line, will rise to four aircraft a month by the end of 2011, Airbus said.
"Our Final Assembly Line here in Tianjin and this first aircraft delivery outside Europe mark an important milestone in our strategic long-term partnership with China and the Chinese industry," Tom Enders, Airbus president and CEO, said in a statement. "This FAL is state of the art, second to none in the world. And so are the aircraft manufactured here in Tianjin."
Airbus delivered the plane to Dragon Aviation Leasing on June 23. Dragon will lease it to Sichuan Airlines, which has been flying A320 airplanes since 1995 and was the first airline in China to use them.
And as Andrea James of the Seattle-Post Intelligencer notes in a recent blog post, the planned growth in production at the Airbus factory in Tianjin has the company's employees in Europe worried they may soon be out work.
The A320 aircraft is the world's best-selling commercial jetliner. More than 6,300 have been sold and about 400 A320 are flying in China. European production of the aircraft was reduced in October from 36 planes a month to 34, according to the International Association of Machinists. It is expect to decline further as production increases in China to cut costs and meet that country's expected demand of 2,800 passenger jets in the next 20 years.
"European unions say the move [to China] only exacerbates fears that more work could be outsourced at a time when European working families need the jobs the most," the machinists union said. "They also fear the loss of European technology to Chinese counterparts."
Airbus officials see things a little differently. They view the Chinese factory and technology-sharing as a tactical move that could provide an advantage over rival Boeing, which makes components in China but doesn't have a full production facility there.
"No one will benefit more from this than Europeans," Airbus CEO Tom Enders said recently. Building aircraft outside of current borders "is the future and, with innovation and internationalization, Airbus can win a share of this future."
But if Airbus doesn't watch out it may have a competitor beyond Boeing to contend with.
As the Post-Intelligencer notes, China's aviation industry includes more than 200 enterprises that produce and manufacture aerospace products and employs 491,000 workers, according to the US-China Economic Security and Review Commission's 2008 report to Congress. China has also has expressed interest in a domestically designed and built aircraft and is therefore hoping to learn from Airbus' expertise.
The newly built A320 took its first test flight last month with the first Chinese test engineer trained by Airbus, and Airbus engineers in Beijing already are working on carbon-composite technology for the next-generation A350 XWB. This doesn't mean the Chinese are poised to take over the aviation industry. But the outlook certainly does not look good for Airbus' European workforce, which seems to be getting mixed signals from Enders.
"Right now the UK is the supplier of wings for the Airbus family but that doesn't mean the Chinese can't build a good wing," he told the Telegraph. "If we underestimate our Chinese friends, there will be a problem. Europe is not the only play in town. The UK has got to keep an edge in research and technology."
Photos: Airbus
POST UPDATED 5 p.m. Eastern June 29 to include link to Seattle Post-Intelligencer.
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