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29/05/2019

Airbus To Relocate Employee To Its Hamburg Unit To Increase Jet Production: Reports




Airbus To Relocate Employee To Its Hamburg Unit To Increase Jet Production: Reports
The plans of increasing production of its A321 passenger jets at its plant in Hamburg is being boosted by Airbus through the mobilizing employees to the production site from outside Germany to help in the production, according to reports quoting sources.
 
The plat of Airbus in Hamburg has been plagued by industrial problems where the company manufactures its A321 model which is in demand among airlines. This model of the best selling single-aisle A320 genre of Airbus aircrafts is the largest.
 
The expansion of airlines into new market has resulted in them making greater use of planes like the 180-240-seat A321 for long-range trips of up to eight or nine hours and therefore these are in greater demand. Hence, despite the fact that there is greater standardization of the single-aisle jets, their greater demand has complicated manufacturing.
 
The longer trips being planned for the A321 planes necessitates the customization of new multi-class cabins which replace designing of the A321 planes that were originally designed for the short- or medium-range trips. And this type of redesigning and fabrication work is handled at the Hamburg factory of Airbus for this model that has turned out to be an important cash cow for the plane maker.
 
“There are staff shortages in Hamburg,” a person familiar with the matter reportedly told the media. “The long-range variant has three-class seating. This is a completely different technique and requires a lot more work... The management has miscalculated the number of hours required for the aircraft,” a union source reportedly told Reuters separately.
 
The production of the A380 superjumbo would come to an end in 2021 and it is expected that about 3,500 staff related to its production stand to lose their jobs. This move by Airbus to relocate them to its Hamburg factory would effectively re redeploy them. In order to work on the complex A321 “Cabin Flex” variant, Airbus is also upgrading some temporary workers to permanent contracts.
 
“The A320 production generally, and especially in Hamburg, is ramping up,” an Airbus spokesman told the media. “A321 Head of Versions (the first edition of a new cabin design) are exclusively built in Hamburg. To address the above challenges, attention and resources are shifting to Hamburg.”
 
Airbus’ factory at Hamburg is under pressure because of the growing demand for the company’s jets as the company introduces new versions of the A321 just even as the overall rate of production in the company is currently faster than ever.
 
According to the new operations chief of Airbus, compared to last year, there has been an improvement in production. 
 
Compared to a current production rate of about 60 a month, Airbus now plans to enhance the production of single-aisle jets to 63 a month in 2021. Reports also suggested that the company is also mulling the possibility of ramping up production to 71 planes a month. The decision of any future production hike would be decided in the second half of the current year, Airbus says.
 
(Source:www.usnews.com)

Christopher J. Mitchell

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