"The transformation of Airbus Industrie: From consortium to company"

The European aerospace industry has an extensive experience of collaborative development. This began in the mid to late 1950s with co-production of the US F-104 and Hawk missile, as well as the NATO-sponsored Fiat G-91 and Bregeut Atlantic. Collaboration came of age with the Franco-German Transall military transport, the Anglo-French Concorde and Jaguar fighter programmes launched in the early 1960s. These were followed by the Airbus and Tornado, several missile and helicopter joint ventures and the beginnings of a European space programme. The initial experience of collaboration was neither easy nor harmonious, with national and corporate rivalries, disputes over work shares and project leadership, and problems stemming from fluctuating political support, providing a continuous backdrop to development. By the 1970s, however, collaboration was accepted as a routine strategy for European aerospace programmes and some of the early problems had been eased by the experience of successfully working together. Practice, and some expensive lessons, had also led to the evolution of more efficient and equitable forms of managing international projects. In particular, the emergence of trans-national project-based consortia such as Panavia (Tornado) and Airbus Industrie, was viewed as a major advance in international programme management. In the case of civil programmes, the growth of industry-led rather than government-inspired collaboration was regarded as an even more significant improvement. Overall, the result of European collaboration up to the late 1980s was to bind European firms in a network of agreements and joining projects, but which did not at the same time entail the surrender of national control over aerospace