Company profile
- Industry
- Aerospace and defense
- Founded
- 1970
- Headquarters
- Leiden, Netherlands
- Ownership
- Publicly traded
Profiles are auto-generated and infrequently updated.
Decisions on record
One verified Decision Record on Airbus, and the casebook each one belongs to.
| Fork date | Decision type | What Airbus chose | Where it stood | The story | Casebook |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2000 | Bet-the-Company | Build the A380 superjumbo | 251 passenger A380s delivered to 14 customers, all delivered as of December 2021 (2021-12) | Read the story → | Bet-the-Company Casebook → |
Videos on Airbus
Run one of these yourself
The decisions Airbus faced, as kits you can run.
Each pack takes one of these decisions and gives you the framework, a deck for the room, a model that resolves to one number, and the sourced cases behind it. $499, one-time.
The analyses
The Bet · Decision Forks
Airbus Bet €15 Billion the World Would Fly Through Hubs. The World Flew Around Them.
Airbus launched the A380 in 2000 to dominate a hub-and-spoke future it forecast at nearly 1,200 very-large aircraft by 2022. It built 251, killed the programme in 2019, and lost to planes with half the engines.
8 min
The Moat Anatomy · Moat & Competition
There Are Only Two Companies on Earth That Can Build a Big Jet. That's the Moat - and the Fragility.
The Airbus-Boeing duopoly looks unbreakable, and in 2024 Airbus delivered 766 aircraft to Boeing's 348. But the moat was built on subsidies the WTO ruled illegal on both sides - and a Chinese rival shipped just 12 planes.
8 min