Case Study: Ethics and Airbus
Chenyi Tao （Livia（ 0740634
1. From the cases, we can see that Airbus often bribe government officials, give
people in target companies kickbacks and pay middlemen high commission fee.
These all helped Airbus win the orders. In the first case, Sabena ordered for 17
Airbus A320S, which it did not need. What is more strange is that, it doubled the
order at the last minute to 34. After 4 years, Sabena went bankrupt. The Airbus
order was a big cause of Sabane’s collapse. In this case, it was discovered that the
company was not in need of all those airbus planes but the order was increased
simply because of the influence by the management of Airbus Company. So
Airbus is the winner as it wins the order of 34 planes. While, Sabena suffered due
to unplanned purchase that led to the collapse of the company.
In the case two, to conceal the corruption, the executive of KAC suspended
Mullah, the financial chief officer, from his job. The top executive in KAC gave the
impression that the order would be Boeing’s. However, al Mishari stunned all the
people that he finally gave the order to Airbus. The executive of KAC received a
lot of money from Airbus and he is the winner in this trade. Airbus got the big
order, it is also the big winner. Boeing is the loser as it lost the order at the last
minute even though its price is more appealing.
In the Indian case, CBI joined the investigation that Airbus had birded highly
placed public servants and other to induce Indian Airlines to order its aircraft.
However, Airbus can still keep out of the affair with the protection of French
government. We cannot know whether or not Airbus paid kickbacks to Gandhi
and associates. In this trade, Airbus is the big winner as it got the order. Then,
Boeing lost the order again.
In the Syrian scandal, this is the only one case of Airbus’s colluding with a
middleman apparently to bribe officials to buy its aircraft has led to convictions.
The middlemen got a lot of money. He forced the airline to buy the planes, worth
$240 million, and as a result Syrian air had incurred “big financial losses”. The
