The newest stretch study was based around a 777-style wing root section, simpler double-slotted flaps, drooped ailerons for takeoff, and a trailing-edge wedge design, originally conceived by McDonnell Douglas, on the outboard wing only. The same features would also be used on a shorter-fuselage version that would be derived from the 747S Stretch and resemble the standard -400 in length and passenger capacity. But by using the bigger wing, improved aerodynamics, and engines of the larger Stretch, the new 747X would become the world’s longest-range aircraft, capable of flying up to 442 passengers across a range of 8,975 nautical miles.

Armed with performance data that said the 747X Stretch would beat the projected operating costs of the A3XX-100, a high-powered Boeing team hit the board-rooms of the major Asia-Pacific carriers in the crucial few weeks before the Airbus meeting in May. The team included the experienced Boeing Product Strategy and Development Vice President John Roundhill and Joe Sutter, the mercurial father of the 747. To prepare the airlines for their visit, Boeing Chairman and Chief Executive Phil Condit had even sent each a letter exhorting the airlines not to commit to the big Airbus until they could be fully briefed on the final performance estimates of the 747X.

The effort did succeed in establishing the launch of the -400ER, which went on to be ordered as both a passenger and a freight aircraft, but it could not stop the inexorable progress of the A3XX toward launch.

As it turned out, however, the big Airbus May 26 go-ahead meeting to give the project the official green light was postponed, but not because of the Boeing counterattack, said Airbus. Rather, the consortium said that extra time was needed to fine-tune other aspects of the program, particularly final decisions over funding, allocations of work share, and the location of the final assembly line. Airbus hoped to hold the meeting at the upcoming Berlin Air Show on June 8.

Finding enough money was crucial for Airbus. Camus said that the Airbus partners were spending Fr250 million (U.S. $42 million) each month on the A3XX effort and were effectively “working in a world in which it is already launched.” The program had been getting some good news on this front, however. While Forgeard had been on his sales road trip, the first state-aid grant for the 3XX program, now valued at about $12 billion, was announced by the U.K. government, which approved an $835 million (£530 million) loan to BAE Systems. The move inevitably sparked complaints from Boeing that, over the subsequent years, would eventually reignite the furious transatlantic dispute over subsidies that had only been grudgingly settled under the provisions of a 1992 trade agreement (see Chapter 13).

News of the loan also came as the Airbus partners finally reached unofficial agreement to house the A3XX final assembly line in Toulouse, France. The rumors leaking out of Airbus suggested that the agreement covered an overall rationalization of the production setup, with Toulouse taking the lead on all wide-body production, and Hamburg assuming final assembly of all single-aisle aircraft. The truth, when it came out, was more complex and somewhat unexpected (see Chapter 8).

Customer momentum was simultaneously building, with Air France becoming the next airline to join the potential launch group with a requirement of up to 10 new aircraft. In early June, Air France’s president, Jean-Cyril Spinetta, said that the A3XX, “could constitute the appropriate solution for Air France in the very-large-capacity market, meeting our needs in terms of capacity for the projected growth in air traffic, but also in terms of range, operational efficiency, passenger comfort, and environmental friendliness.”

A week later, Emirates Chief Maurice Flanagan was more vocal in his support when he wrote a letter to London’s Evening Standard newspaper saying, “With world passenger numbers growing at 5 percent a year, I don’t know what other airlines are waiting for. Takeoff and landing slots at major airports will continue to be tight and we will need bigger aircraft.”

Meanwhile, talks to create the new Airbus, now dubbed the Airbus Integrated Company (AIC), stormed ahead between BAE and the soon-to-be-formed EADS companies, though several major issues remained to be solved, including financial share and corporate governance. Although the issues of the AIC and the A3XX launch were officially separated, the two were inevitably linked, and by June 2000 the partners agreed to sort out both issues at the same time. In theory, the AIC and A3XX could not be tied directly because talks over the formation of the “new” Airbus were going on at partner level, while authority to offer the A3XX rested with the Airbus supervisory board. The building blocks of the AIC were completed when the last hurdles were cleared for the formation of EADS with the merger of Aerospatiale Matra, CASA, and DaimlerChrysler Aerospace.