London: Aerospace giant, Eurpoean Aeronautic Defence and Space company (EADS), remains locked in crisis following delays in the delivery of its flagship A380 plane.
CNN got access to the Airbus super-jumbo at its construction site in Toulouse and spoke to senior executives about what went wrong.
The problems at EADS begin inside the massive cathedral like factory where the world's biggest passenger plane is being built.
A walk through the underbelly of EADS' biggest, newest now the most controversial aircraft, the Airbus A380 - which now at least a year behind schedule - revealed that the culprit was none other than wiring problems.
Vice-President, A380 Programme, Andreas Fehring says, "We have several small things which have summed up to a need for several changes inside the fuselage."
Hundreds of staff at the Toulouse production plant are working overtime to fix the problems with 300 miles of electrical cable inside each A380 aircraft and t he process is very time consuming.
"If you find at the end that the wire-end is too short, because it had to be moved around due to structural obstacles, then the whole thing has to be removed. There are a lot of brackets inside, which need to be removed if one needs to access something behind it," says Fehring.
Airbus is confident it can get the wiring sorted out in time to deliver the first A380 to Singapore Airlines by December, 2006.
The delays will cost Airbus billions of dollars in lost profits, extra costs and compensation. Meeting the new deadline is also fundamental for its reputation.
It's a serious setback for Airbus and its parent company EADS for they were counting on the A380 to map out the future of air travel.
Of course, it can still do that because despite the delay, none of the 16 airlines and leasing companies that have ordered 159 A380's have backed out.
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