It is -- unfortunately -- common for companies in a market economy to rethink their strategies, restructure loss-making businesses and cut thousands of jobs. The power of the stock markets and institutional investors demanding increased share prices from one quarter to the next, the pressures of globalization and location costs often force companies to impose sweeping cuts, in order to remain competitive in the long term.

But the fact that a technologically brilliant company like Airbus, which along with Boeing practically dominates the world market, creates top-quality products, and, with 7,000 advance orders, probably has too many -- not too few -- contracts on its books, should find itself in this predicament and now needs to cut 10,000 jobs -- that is unique in the European business landscape. How could it have come to this?

Yet even the birth of EADS -- the four-country Airbus parent company -- in the late 1990s was far from straightforward. The investment bankers who helped with the negotiations still sigh at the labor pains and skirmishes that went on behind the scenes. A total of 10,000 pages of contracts went back and forth and even the French president interfered vehemently in the negotations.

From the very beginning Airbus was a political construct and was at least partly intended to satisfy national egotism. And so two managers -- usually one German and one French -- were always appointed to the decisive posts in the company, as if the business partners mistrusted each other.

Even at the operational level, the German and French managers worked against each other rather than pulling together. The production processes were designed less with business efficiency in mind and more according to political considerations. The two worlds were so at odds with each other that they even used two different software systems, which led them to arrive at different measurements -- as the problems with the A380 cable harnesses which were too short revealed.

A further aggravation was the fact that while the French state makes no bones of its interventionist industrial policy, German interests were largely represented by the major shareholder DaimlerChrysler. From the very beginning, the automobile manufacturer resisted the centralized state structures, which were diametrically opposed to the company's ideas of how business should be done.

And while the former DaimlerChrysler boss Jürgen Schrempp occasionally thumped the table in fury over Airbus, his successor Dieter Zetsche was distracted by the other problems that his predecessor had left him. Zetsche concentrated on the automobile business -- from his point of view, EADS and Airbus no longer belonged to DaimlerChrysler's core business.

Perhaps one super-manager intent on finding compromises could have navigated the plane manufacturer into calmer skies, despite all the political wrangling. But the company never had -- and still doesn't have -- that kind of leader, unfortunately.

The European company started falling apart two years ago, when the authoritarian Frenchman Nöel Forgeard decided he wanted to get rid of the double CEO structure and manage the company alone. The old managing duo resigned in exasperation after months of bickering, and for the first time the company's employees started to worry.

During his time at the helm, the cantankerous and aloof Airbus boss established a mode of reporting that glossed over problems with the motto: What must not happen, cannot happen. In this way serious shortfalls at Airbus were elegantly concealed. It was only in June of last year that the top management admitted that the company was far behind schedule in the development and production of the super-jumbo A380 and that it would not be able to deliver the aircraft by the contractually agreed date.

The extent of this disaster surprised even the most expert of financial analysts. In a flash, the EADS share price tumbled by a massive 26 percent. Many top managers, including Forgeard --who had been fired by that stage -- and Airbus Vice President Fabrice Brégier, had already sold their shares in March. The French stock exchange supervisory authorities are still looking into whether this was a case of insider trading. Forgeard's successor Christian Streiff only lasted a few months at Airbus before leaving for Peugeot.

It is doubtful whether the new Airbus boss Louis Gallois will be able to succeed with the Power8 restructuring program. True, the 62-year-old, who took up the job in October of last year, is said to have a talent for diplomacy. But Gallois can't change the fundamental Airbus structures. According to a basic principle of the market economy, Airbus will only have enough air to breathe when it is completely de-politicized.

However, in the case of Airbus the situation is a lot more complicated. Yes, restraint on the part of the state would be desirable on the German side. But that could also be a mistake if the other side, the French, didn't do the same. Airbus can only prosper when this contradiction is resolved.

But before that can happen there will be plenty of trouble. The Airbus European works council has already announced strikes and protests against management.

"We don't have the problem of having too many people on the payroll -- we have no end of work," argued Rüdiger Lütjen, the chairman of the German works council -- thus describing the company's situation in a nutshell.