The Airbus Revolution

If Concorde was a beautiful dream, Airbus was a practical revolution. Founded in 1970 as a consortium between France, Germany, Britain, and Spain, it aimed to break American dominance in commercial aviation. France, through Aérospatiale, provided leadership and the largest workshare.

The first Airbus, the A300, embodied a different philosophy from American competitors. While Boeing pursued hub-and-spoke networks requiring very large aircraft, Airbus bet on point-to-point travel with efficient twin-engine wide-bodies. The A300's twin-aisle cabin for medium-range routes created a new market segment.

Initial sales were slow. American airlines, comfortable with Boeing and McDonnell Douglas, saw no reason to switch. The breakthrough came from an unexpected source: Eastern Airlines' Frank Borman, himself a former astronaut, agreed to lease four A300s for six months free. The fuel efficiency and reliability convinced him to buy 23 more. The American market was cracked.

French leadership of Airbus went beyond workshare percentages. The company headquarters in Toulouse became the center of European aerospace. The French approach to engineering—emphasizing elegance and efficiency over brute force—influenced design philosophy. The decision to pursue fly-by-wire technology, where computers interpret pilot inputs, came from French engineers who had developed it for Concorde.

The A320, launched in 1987, revolutionized commercial aviation. The first fully fly-by-wire commercial aircraft, it offered unprecedented fuel efficiency and safety. Pilots transitioning from conventional aircraft initially resisted the side-stick controllers and computer-mediated controls, but the benefits soon became clear. The common cockpit philosophy, allowing pilots to easily transition between different Airbus models, gave airlines operational flexibility Boeing couldn't match.