Airbus CEO urges UK to avoid no-deal Brexit

Building on a proud 100-year British aviation heritage, every wing on Airbus commercial aircraft is designed and manufactured in the UK. Tom Enders explained that the continued manufacturing presence of Airbus in the UK is under threat if there is a no-deal Brexit, placing 6,000 jobs at its main wings factory at Broughton, Wales and 3,000 at Filton, near Bristol, in jeopardy. He said: "It is a disgrace that more than two years after the result of the 2016 Referendum, businesses are still unable to plan properly for the future."

The UK has been at the forefront of global aviation for more than a century, is a founding nation of the Airbus consortium and one of the company’s four home markets.

Above: An A350-1000 wing goes into production at Airbus Broughton, North Wales.
Courtesy Airbus

Employing a 14,000-strong workforce across more than 25 sites, Airbus is firmly rooted in the UK and its advanced technology industrial base stretching the length and breadth of the country from Aberdeen to Portsmouth, supporting over 110,000 jobs through its supply chain. .

Airbus is the largest commercial aerospace company in the UK and its biggest civil aerospace exporter; the biggest supplier of helicopters in the country; the UK’s largest space company and leading commercial provider of military satellite communications; the biggest supplier of large aircraft to the Royal Air Force and a prominent provider of cyber security solutions.

Each year Airbus spends in excess of £5 billion with UK suppliers. This UK supply chain comprises more than 4,000 companies, ranging from large primes such as Rolls-Royce and GKN to hundreds of small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) suppliers, each playing a vital role in helping Airbus deliver its products.