CASA Crash

Questions and concerns about the safety and reliability of EADS CASA aircraft, and about the reliability of EADS as a U.S. defense partner

23 February 2007

Crashing the EADS party

As we've grown to cover EADS's overall unreliability, some of our readers have informed us that they can't easily track the crashes of EADS aircraft. So here's a list with links to make searching easier:

1992: 31 die in Indonesian CN-235 crash
1997: All 6 perish aboard CN-235
2001: CN-235 wreck: Turkey's first fatal military crash since '68
2001: Second CN-235 crash kills 34 Turkish troops
2001: All dead in third Turkish CN-235 disaster
2001: Spain announces probe of Turkish CN-235 crashes
2001: Faulty CN-235 rudder in Turkish crash
2001: 4 die in Spanish CN-235 accident
2001: Consumer group wants CN-235 fleet scrapped
2002: New airline owner dumps CN-235s
2003: 7 French troops die in CN-235 wreck
2005: Indonesian CN-235 breaks apart, killing three
2006: EADS talks of CN-235 safety but is silent on crashes
2006: CN-235 death toll now at 92
2006: Suspicious timing on shifted blame for CN-235 crash
2006: Coast Guard raised safety issues about CN-235
2006: Sweden grounds EADS CASA fleet after deadly wreck
2006: Probe: Wing fell off Swedish EADS CASA plane
2006: Mexican Navy EADS CASA plane goes down at sea
2006: EADS CASA C-212 death toll: 463 and rising
2006: Cracks found in several C-212 wing fittings

03 February 2007

How German Airbus workers view the USA

Look who wants us to save their jobs! It's the German union IG Metall, which represents Airbus Deutschland workers.

IG Metall's magazine, shown at left, officially views American businessess as "bloodsuckers," "plunderers" and "parasites."

Even though the liberal Free Democrat Party leadership assailed the union's portrayal of Americans, union leaders and their Social Democrat allies defended it. A union spokesman defended the May 2005 cover and other artwork as "a good caricature." Metall is the largest labor union magazine in Germany, with a circulation of 2,000,000.

(Funny how German socialists over the past 75 years love to portray people they hate as insects, isn't it?)

Now, IG Metall workers stand to lose thousands of Airbus jobs under the EADS reorganization. They're hoping that the American bloodsuckers will buy their Airbus A330 tanker to keep them employed.

Workers threaten Airbus slowdown as EADS tries to reconcile the irreconcilable

The built-in contradictions of statist European industrial policy and the free market are cracking through the corporate structure of EADS, whose Airbus division threatens to tear itself apart. Tens of thousands of Airbus workers in Germany and France plan a work slowdown to protest the company's "Power 8" emergency cost-cutting measures.

Airbus is finding it cannot be both a successful private enterprise and a eurosocialist jobs program. Its illogical management structure, dysfunctional pan-nationalist industrial divisions and failed management decisions have caused the leaders of the once high-flying giant to pull the ejector seat. Now EADS must slash thousands of Airbus jobs.

And the workers, with their red banners, are revolting. “Today’s demonstrations in Germany mark only the beginning of a possible Europe-wide wave of protest should the EADS management plan mass layoffs and site closures,” a German union leader tells Reuters. French unions pledged support and have appealed for more government subsidies of Airbus.

Does the United States Department of Defense want to entrust its next generation cargo and tanker aircraft to Airbus?