#1 French Village Bids Final Good-Bye to the A380 Convoy
Lévignac, France - The last convoy of outsized parts for the world's largest airliner crawled towards an assembly plant in southwest France late Wednesday, applauded by residents and production workers as Europe's Airbus prepares to build the last A380 superjumbo.
Trucks carrying three fuselage sections squeezed through the rural village of Lévignac on their way to Toulouse, where the final superjumbo will be assembled before the model ends production in 2021, just 14 years after entering service.
Faced with weak sales of the four-engined behemoth, beaten on efficiency by smaller jets like the Airbus A350 and Boeing 787, Airbus announced the early halt last year.
Airbus has spent billions on vision of a 555 seater jet. Airbus Industrial problems forced Airbus to learn tough lessons which helped the company build the 350 broadly on time. Click to learn more on why A380 Production had to end.
"This is an Aircraft which brought all four European partners together (France, Spain, Britain, Germany) as one partner " said the program head, PHILLIPE MHUN. " We are all convinced that Airbus would not be what ot is today without the A380".
#2 Airline Brand LEVEL (Europe) files Insolvency
Austrian short haul LCC Level Europe files for insolvency today resulting in the lastest Airline casualty of the corona virus pandemic despite of the financial help from parent IAG.
Level Europe blamed the Covid 19 pandemic for the ceasure of trading after grounding Aircrafts for months during lockdown. The Airline began operating on 2018. Its fleet consisted of Airbus narrow body jets and is a part of IAG owned Vueling group. IAG also operates a long haul carrier Level , which is independent from Level Europe.
Early in the lockdown, Anglo-Spanish IAG said it has 10 billion Euros for liquidity but as the crisis continues the airline burns through cash holdings. British Airways, a part of the same group has to cut-off 12k jobs to survive.
While Government bailouts were biased towards other European rivals on the list like Air France, KLM and Lufthansa, LEVEL struggled to level-off this recession!