Although European airlines were buying Boeing, Lockheed, and McDonnell Douglas airliners, European governments, especially the French and the Germans, were not particularly happy about the American monopoly in large commercial aircraft. With their encouragement, 1968 saw the advent of Airbus Industrie, a consortium of French, German, British, and Spanish aerospace companies pulled together to develop and produce European airliners. (Of course, this does not mean that Airbus content would invariably be 100% European. With engines and electronics, the American content of these European airplanes could be as much as 40%.) Their first product was the A300, a wide-bodied, two-engine aircraft a little smaller than the L-1011 or the DC-10-10 for short- and medium-range citypairs on the European continent. There was no comparable American aircraft.

The A300 was intended to be a philosophical statement of European technological prowess, and politics demanded that every possible element from design to hardware be European. The A300 would not only fill a European need; it was to be a mark of European pride to have a commercial airliner that could be exported to America and the rest of the world. A European Rolls-Royce engine was offered. We held little hope for getting an engine on the A300.

We had made a huge commitment to the commercial engine market with the CF6 for the DC-10, however; and European airlines had already ordered that application. A strong case could be made for engine commonality in their fleets making maintenance more economical. Even a small A300 program might...