The Energy Crisis in the EU and UK

The energy crisis in the EU and UK has become even more entrenched. I have a link to a recent interview with a royal Saudi prince who is in the Oil and Gas division of the government.  He was predicting that the EU and UK energy crisis may last for 3-4 years for a number of reasons.  This essentially means that the Airbus Broughton, North Wales, UK wing skin and wing assembly facility may be closing for much longer than I would have guessed.

In the rest of the G7 industrialized countries, demand from passengers to fly is almost back up to pre Covid travel levels.  This Christmas travel season will be chaotic at best. Two different financial services are predicting a very mild recession in both Europe and the US in the 2nd quarter of 2023.  In the next sentence, they are also predicting a substantial upswing in the economies of East Asia.  The Airbus Tianjin, China assembly facility serves these Asian aircraft markets. Even if all industrial facilities in the EU & UK are closed, the Asian market will still require aircraft components including complete wing assemblies.

With inflation staying stubbornly high, the high price of fuel has become the new normal for aircraft resulting in the airlines wanting new very fuel efficient aircraft to stay competitive with other competing airlines and to add to their profit margin.