Airbus confirms 3700 jobs ‘impacted’ by A380 production cut – no job losses expected at Broughton

Airbus has confirmed up to 3700 jobs will be ‘impacted’ as a result of the planned reduction rates of the A380 superjumbo and A400 military transporter.

Managers met with the European Works Council today  to discuss the impact on jobs, following the meeting the planemaker confirmed up to 3700 jobs in the UK, France, Germany and Spain will be affected.

In a video uploaded to YouTube this afternoon Thierry Baril, Chief Human Resources Officer said:

“Today at a meeting European Works Council has confirmed the necessary adjustment in terms of production rate of two main programmes of the company the A380 and the A400.

By 2020 we will deliver six A380 per year and eight A400M as well.

In fact we are three years in front of us in order to manage this necessary adaptation.

We will deliver 12 A380 in 2018 then we will deliver eight in 2019 to go with the six i just mentioned (2020)

For the A400M 15 in 2018 11 in 2019 eight in 2020.

So you can see we have enough time to deal with the potential implications to other people.

Today we have started an official process with our unions to look at what we can do in order somewhere to deal with these people implications, 3700 positions are potentially impacted.

We are really used to dealing with such adaptations in the past we have demonstrated when some programs were impacted in terms of ramp down we were able to re-deploy a lot of people because other programs are ramping up, it will be exactly the same case for this particular adaptation.

I really commit with my team to make it happen with as usual a responsible manner in the way we are dealing with people impacts”

Around 250 employees at Airbus currently work on the A380 in the UK, Alyn and Deeside MP Mark Tami says he has spoken to officials at Broughton who have said there will be no job losses at the site;

“I have already spoken to officials at Airbus Broughton and have had it confirmed that there will be no job losses at this site.
However it is always a concern whenever there are job losses involved even if they do not directly affect my constituents.

I know Airbus are performing extremely well in other areas and I hope this will continue to be the case so jobs in Broughton will continue to be secured”  Said Mr Tami.

Emirates Airline said last month it will buy up to 36 more of the A380 superjumbos, that deal will allows Airbus to sustain A380 production at a minimum production rate over the next few years.

IAG, which owns British Airways and Iberia said it would consider buying more A380s if Airbus improves the pricing of the superjumbo, the airline group’s chief executive said on Tuesday.

“The pricing that Airbus has offered in the past is unacceptable to us,” IAG boss Willie Walsh said on the sidelines of a conference hosted by industry body Airlines for Europe.

“We’ve said very clearly to Airbus if they want to sell A380s they need to be aggressive on pricing and when they work out how to sell the aircraft, knock on our door and we’ll talk to them,” he said.