ABSTRACT
Airbus Industrie, from the European view, is a major success story. From a company that produced a single product only two decades ago, Airbus has become the number two firm in the small universe of producers of commercial jet aircraft. Only Boeing is larger. Airbus is essentially a “chosen instrument” of a European policy that calls for participation in the high visibility, technology leading sectors that constitute commercial jet aircraft manufacturing. Airbus employs large numbers of skilled professionals and technicians and keeps related industries at the forefront of advancing technology. In the process it has also shattered what Europe saw as a virtual American monopoly of an industry to which it feels it has equal or better historical claims.
