Boeing’s man in Europe

By Susanna Ray

Herald Writer

BRUSSELS — It would be like someone from Everett heading up American sales for Airbus.

The Boeing Co. has hired a native German to tackle the tough challenge of outmaneuvering Airbus in the European competition’s own back yard. And it’s not just any German, but one who grew up in Hamburg, home to a major Airbus final-assembly plant that produces three lines of jets.

The European extraction is intentional; the Hamburg heritage is just a coincidence and "an additional kick to my appointment," said Heiner Wilkens, who started his new job as Boeing’s senior vice president and general manager for Europe and Russia on Aug. 1.

With two one-week trips to Seattle under his belt in his month-long tenure, Wilkens has been a busy man, and in a squeezed-in interview at Boeing’s European headquarters in Brussels, Belguim, he said he doesn’t expect the traveling pace to let up.

"I’ll be going back and forth (between Seattle and Brussels)," he said. "I need to get Boeing into my fiber."

But Wilkens is no rookie when it comes to his new employer or to the industry as a whole. He bought many a Boeing jet as vice president of purchasing for Lufthansa. And as president and CEO of Cargolux Airlines International S.A., a freight airline in Luxembourg, Belgium, he insisted on an all-Boeing fleet. "I’m a fan of the 747-400," he said.

The tall, handsome and polished 59-year-old displays an even mixture of American friendliness and European reserve, and knows the CEO of every airline in Europe, thanks to his 40-year career in aviation.

Wilkens hopes those traits and contacts will come in handy with his new, two-fold challenge: "The ultimate goal, of course, is to increase the market share of Boeing in Europe. But I’m also here to represent the globalization of Boeing."

The headquarters move to Chicago was a necessary part of that globalization, Wilkens said, as was the opening of a European office here last year and the push to fill it with more European nationals rather than just "expatriates from Seattle."

In contrast, Airbus has long had a large U.S. headquarters based in Washington, D.C., and run by Americans.

"It’s important that the public in Europe understands that (Boeing is not just a U.S. company), because the public is associating the European aviation industry with Airbus, not Boeing, and we need to change that," Wilkens said. Boeing works with more than 400 suppliers all across Europe, he added, and "more than 90,000 jobs in Europe alone are dependent on Boeing."

Airbus spokesman David Voskuhl in Hamburg declined to comment on Wilkens’ appointment, but he echoed Wilkens’ global emphasis.

"We at Airbus are proud of our European roots," Voskuhl said. "Europe is one of the regions where we’ve been most successful, but we do have big customers in the U.S., just as Boeing has big customers here.

"Our business is no confrontation between Europe and the U.S."

Still, working more closely with potential European customers is exactly what the doctor ordered for Boeing in this time of drooping aircraft sales and a lagging economy, said Howard Wheeldon, an analyst who follows the aerospace industry for Prudential-Bache in London.

"(Boeing) has clearly lost out to Airbus in terms of global sales, and a big part of that is Europe, so to fight back, Boeing has to be seen as closer to the ground," Wheeldon said. "They’ve got to become more European."

But Wheeldon added that Boeing can’t grow on relationships alone — the company will also have to spend a pretty penny on marketing efforts in Europe.

"You don’t get closer to your customers by just having a couple of guys floating around Europe, be they Europeans or not," he said.

A big part of those marketing efforts will be aimed at showing that Boeing cares about the environment, Wilkens said.

"With the Sonic Cruiser, the question right away was, ‘Is it environmentally friendly?’ And this question came from the Europeans and not the Americans," he said.

Because Europe is so densely populated, environmental regulations here are more stringent. Boeing planes do meet those tough standards, Wilkens said, but Airbus is doing a better job of marketing its green side to the public and therefore to the airline buyers, who are increasingly influenced by public opinion.

The Bush administration has struck an additional blow to Boeing’s image in Europe, Wilkens said, where average citizens and government officials alike have been harshly critical of what they see as the new president’s isolationist and anti-environment policies.

"Canceling the Kyoto Protocol, just to name one thing, certainly does not help the image of America," he said, referring to the United Nations-sponsored treaty on global warming that the Bush administration rejected.

And by threatening to back out of other treaties such as the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, Wilkens fears Bush was signaling that, as the leader of the most powerful country in the world, he doesn’t care about contracts — "and that’s not good."

Still, Wilkens said he doesn’t feel like an underdog in the Old Country, and he sees no reason to be pessimistic about the difficult financial times or his uphill battle in Europe. Instead, he exudes enthusiasm and hyped-up energy about all things Boeing.

"I have many friends at Airbus, and I’m looking forward to competing with them," he said with a mischievous smile. "A lot."

Herald reporter Susanna Ray is working in Dsseldorf, Germany, on an Arthur F. Burns Fellowship for promoting cross-cultural professional ties between German and U.S. journalists. She can be reached at ray@heraldnet.com.