Seconding this, I'm Dutch and I still struggle to see how they'd complement each other.

Well that's just because you hate both the French and the Germans ;)

In France we're creative but sloppy, in Germany they care about the process too much but they don't deviate from plans. It's nice to have both: what's the point of following the plan if the entire project is pointless ? French people would challenge early and often, while germans would implement correctly and to the letter.

I really feel we complement each other, each time I work with germans they fix my tendency to be quick and dirty and I push them to accelerate and take shortcuts when they make sense.

Ah, I see! That's cool.

French engineers were known for their willingness to embrace advanced, high-risk technologies to gain a decisive advantage in the aerospace market.

French influence drove Airbus's early focus on understanding customer needs and adapting to market requirements. Early on, the company adopted English as its working language and U.S. measurements to appeal to a wider range of airline customers.

German engineers brought a reputation for meticulous attention to detail, efficiency, and robust industrial processes, ensuring reliable and high-quality production.

Germany's strong engineering foundation provided the technical discipline needed to standardize components and organize the complex cross-border manufacturing process.

Yes. Also the way how internal collaboration works. A lot of focus on relationship building and pre-alignments vs a content-first approach („people will accept it if it’s just correct enough“). In any real-world situation that matters it will always take a bit of both

> Early on, the company adopted English as its working language and U.S. measurements to appeal to a wider range of airline customers.

Airbus uses US measurements - i.e., not the metric system?

I'm speechless

They use SAE nuts and bolts. "Society of Automotive Engineers and refers to the system of inch-based fasteners used primarily in North America"

Is that the standard in the airline industry? For example, does Embraer use SAE too? Lockheed (I thought the US military used metric)?

Dunno. My info's from https://www.reddit.com/r/aviationmaintenance/comments/botlch...

Update - google says Embraer uses SAE. Apparently Airbus helicopters are metric though.

What’s your source for that? It reads like a cliché, especially when you know about the arguably stronger engineering background in France when it comes to aerospace.

There was that problem with CAD software on the A380: German teams used CATIA version 4, while French had upgraded to version 5, resulting in incompatibilities.

"By late autumn, a team of around 200 German mechanics was in Toulouse along with several hundred kilometers of electrical cables to be installed in the first planes. But after weeks of painstakingly threading thousands of veins of copper and aluminum wire around the walls and floor panels of the airframes, the teams had run into a maddening snag: the cables were too short.

"The wiring wasn't following the expected routing through the fuselage, so when we got to the end they weren't long enough to meet up with the connectors on the next section," said one German mechanic, who said he arrived in Toulouse in early 2005. He asked not to be identified out of fear that he might lose his job. "The calculations were wrong," he said. "Everything had to be ripped out and replaced from scratch." --- nytimes https://archive.vn/uLIqa#selection-603.204-617.419

Mistakes happen on large, highly complex projects involving multiple teams in multiple locations ?

Colour me surprised !