Airbus to move work outside Europe

As a cheap manufacturing source, China also tops the list. At the moment the country has hardly any Airbus work, but plenty is planned there and it could well end up assembling whole planes in the future. According to some experts, the United States was another likely source for Airbus.

Meanwhile, such speculation has picked up steam on the back of confirmation from Airbus that it planned to cut 1,600 jobs in the UK over four years, in an attempt to cut costs. The company currently employs more than 11,000 staff in the UK. These cuts are part of a larger series of cuts across Europe that could see the continent losing up to 10,000 jobs. Airbus has 57,000 workers in Europe, and expects to shed a lot of temporary staffers.

According to Airbus president and chief executive Louis Gallois, the "trigger" for the overhaul of Airbus was the production problems with the super jumbo A380. Deliveries for this prestigious Airbus project have been pushed back by two years even as development costs have ballooned to about 5 billion euros ($6.6 billion).

Gallois said that the main problem, however, was the weakness of the US dollar. The firm was desperately in need of finances to develop the A350 plane, its candidate to compete with Boeing's 787 Dreamliner. According to Gallois one of the biggest problems facing the company was the fact that it did not have partners to invest in the development of new products. This compelled it to raise huge amounts  of money to finance its operations. The 787 has walked away with a substantial portion of the long-range market, even as the Airbus A380 flounders.

France is likely to face 4,300 job losses, even as Germany loses 3,700 jobs. Spain is likely to be the least affected with 400 jobs cut.