The board of directors of Airbus Group met last week at the plant in San Pablo in Seville and the visit of the leadership of the company has transcended information of great significance for the future of its main program in Spain and Andalusia, the the A400M military transport plane. Pilar Albiac, executive vice president of operations Defense & Space Airbus, the subsidiary that groups all Airbus military affairs, told the staff St. Paul in a speech that Egypt has asked the company to have the A400M multi-national four-engine turboprop military transport aircraft as soon as possible.
Has not disclosed the number of units that the African country has requested, but what matters is that would be the first state seeking to buy these aircraft since the program was launched by the customer nations (Germany, United Kingdom, France, Spain, Luxembourg, Turkey, Belgium and Malaysia, which joined in 2005). And even more relevant because last May 9 one of the planes that was by testing before delivery to the Turkish army fell shortly after takeoff in Seville. The accident is therefore not taking effect on the export potential of the device.
Egypt is the first customer of another Airbus military aircraft that is assembled in Seville, the C295, which runs 24 aircraft, the largest fleet in the world individually. Albiac told the staff that the response of the Egyptian army Airbus has been that it must meet its commitments to the countries and customers, but that Egypt welcomes aware of the importance of the A400M aircraft to keep it safe.
Airbus already had an order of 8 aircraft from South Africa that eventually was canceled, and another 3 to Chile is to be realized after being frozen by the change of government in recent years. Egypt and would be the first new customer. It remains to be seen whether the planes that can be sold to the country would be the Spanish army has already said it does not want, half of the 27 aircraft originally commissioned and that Spain has agreed with Airbus to jointly market.
Albiac also encouraged the workers and management of San Pablo to make the effort required to deliver 10 aircraft A400M in the remainder of 2015 have been delivered five aircraft (the last one week ago) so far this year, bringing the goal of providing customers between 13 and 17 appliances in this exercise would be fulfilled.
The Airbus A400M is a multi-national four-engine turboprop military transport aircraft. It was designed by Airbus Military (merged in January 2014 to Airbus Defence and Space) as a tactical airlifter withstrategic capabilities to replace older transport aircraft, such as the Transall C-160 and the Lockheed C-130 Hercules. As well as transport, the A400M can perform electronic surveillance and aerial refuelling.