Europe's Aerospace Industry Looking Confident

Apart from Airbus's highly visible presence in defense and commercial aircraft, Europe also has successful capabilities in helicopters, business jets, and aero engines, and in all these areas their global market share is growing.

Talk of further consolidation within Europe's dynamic aerospace sector has been on the lips of industry watchers for several years, but although the major European-based global players have not progressed toward further mergers, the continent's biggest aerospace company, the former EADS, has achieved a very significant business restructuring, sweeping all its diverse companies into one giant, three-division entity, and adopting the new corporate identity of the Airbus Group.

At one stage it looked as if a proposed merger between EADS and BAE Systems might create the world's largest combined aerospace and defense company, but a German political veto put an end to this plan, largely because of sensitivity over the defense aspects of such a deal.