. There was Martha Stewart, a nobody in financial terms but a household icon, caught doing insider dealing and sent away to make license plates.
Point of information: Martha Stewart's net worth was recently estimated at $500 million, down from $1 bill the year before.
Yes, limited slot-to-slot traffic on some routes translates into "fill the buses as big as they can get", but on the scale of things, how many routes like that are there in the world? Is it big enough to make money on?
There's other concerns with the A380 Skytanic. Dunno if any of you have noticed, but fuel prices have been going up. Some time in the next 15 years, we'll be hitting peak oil production, and with it, high fuel prices. Airbus' economic model for the A380 is based on the assumption that Air Transport is going to increase across the life (hence the need to get those slots in Asia). As energy prices soar, air traffic will decrease. And with energy prices go the prices of landing rights. Moreover, any sensible corporate plan for an aviation company must assess the threat of limitations on carbon emissions (greenhouse gases). These factors may limit the attractiveness of the "Hub-and-Spoke" system that is the backbone of many airlines today.
After all, what is a hub to a passenger? It is a place he didn't want to go to and can't wait to leave, but will put up with for a much cheaper ticket.
The A380 is an aircraft that's built around the "Hub-and-Spoke" model (Hub-to-Hub, to be exact). I'm not saying Hubs will go away, or lose their importance, but the folks who buy the planes need to consider things like cost and market before committing to something as big and expensive as the A380.
But the news is extremely damaging. It comes out, and there are intimations that upper levels of the corporation are squabbling while the managers are a bunch of hand-picked Yes-men who ignore the physically possible in favor of what will get them their promotion. Can things really be that bad?
Then the reaction of Forgeard and crew confirms our suspicion: they start finger-pointing at each other, alleging that fault lies in the other side's ignorance of what was actually going on in the company.
So we're left wondering: how many other surprises does Airbus have? Or should we just put on our Ville Rose-Coloured glasses and say the delays don't amount to much?