BBC Business – “The government is to give plane manufacturer Airbus up to £340m in loans for new projects, Business Secretary Lord Mandelson has said. £60m was also loaned to GKN in 2008.”
“Business Secretary Lord Mandelson made the announcement on a visit to the Filton, Bristol, plant of Airbus UK which will be making the wings for the new plane.” Filton is in north Bristol, UK.
It's very interesting to see that a massive Government investment has just been announced into exactly the sort of research UWE used to do well, such as the A380 wing development, I was one of the UWE staff involved in this cutting edge (literally) research. UWE has recently pulled UWE out of this research. Now the A350 wing development will proceed without UWE.
BBC News -
https://owa.uwe.ac.uk/exchweb/bin/redir.asp?URL=http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/8201222.stm
Yahoo News -
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/21/20090814/tuk-340m-loan-boost-for-airbus-project-6323e80.html
The people behind UWEs' decision to pull out of these kind of research were Steve West the Vice Chancellor, and Martin Boddy, the head of the Faculty.
I hope they both have the sense to realise they have made an expensive mistake.
This is like a small version of the Government decision way back to pull out of research into rockets, just before a massive market emerged for satellite launches.
A350X investment and wing manufacture research -
My article about this for Huliq news, 14th August 2009 - http://www.huliq.com/5/84957/a350x-investment-and-wing-manufacture-research.
Based on BBC and Yahoo News stories
West of England Aerospace Forum (WEAF) - http://www.weaf.co.uk/news?id=90 - Government Invests £340million in Next Generation Aircraft Design & Manufacture 18/08/09
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