Tanker News 26 June

The following two tanker related articles caught our eye:

Forbes: Airbus Not Speaking Customer's Language
Key passage:

Airbus is also suffering from delays in its A400M military transport aircraft... Enders said he expects the maiden flight of the A400M military transport aircraft to take place "in September or October," rather than this summer as previously indicated...

According to a report by WirtschaftsWoche--a weekly German business paper--the delays of the military planes are due to cooperation problems between the Spanish and French factories.

"The French don't want to help the Spaniards to solve their problems in production," said an unnamed manager from Airbus, according to the paper.

If EADS can not get the French and Spanish working together smoothly how are they going to get their proposed US factory working with the French and Germans? Also, one wonders what this lack of coordination will mean for Airbus's new assembly facility in China.

AFP : US Defense Secretary Enters Tanker Controversy
Key passage:

While the Air Force has 60 days to respond to the GAO, Gates "wants to move as quickly as possible" on the issue, [Pentagon spokesman Geoff] Morrell said.

"This is something the secretary is going to be involved in."

Although some of us here believe the SecDef has already been involved in the tanker contract in a detrimental way, Tanker War Blog would welcome a swift and truly fair rebidding of the contract.