Propelling Airbus

John Leahy is an unabashed workaholic who spends 200 days a year on the road and puts in 18-hour days in the home office. When he is not making sales presentations or hunkering down in strategy meetings, this silver-haired, 49-year-old native of New York State is calling customers on his mobile phone or jogging to maintain his fighting edge. Colleagues say he is a tough taskmaster who pushes his 500-member sales force as hard as he pushes himself. In many ways, Leahy is a typical American business executive. Except he's not in America. In Toulouse he heads the marketing arm of Europe's Airbus Industrie, the four-nation consortium that has been making life painfully difficult for U.S. aviation giant Boeing, in no small measure because of Leahy's efforts.

Last year, for only the second time in its 30-year history, Airbus surpassed Boeing in confirmed orders, 476 (worth $30.5 billion) to 391 ($28.3 billion). So far this year, Airbus has 34 firm orders compared with Boeing's 17. But those figures scant Airbus' achievement, since five years ago Boeing boasted four times as many orders as its brash European rival. "I doubt if anyone else in the world could have pulled off what John and his team have done," says an admiring Airbus official.

The most significant thing about the sales staff, he says, is not his American background but the team approach he fosters. "There are no divas here. This is not about me or [Airbus CEO] Nol Forgeard selling planes over a 2 1/2-hour lunch. We have built a team from the ground up. Salesmen, contract specialists, finance specialists, airline analysts and pilots all work together."

Leahy's experience in the business is hands-on. Armed with an M.B.A. from Syracuse University, he got a commercial pilot's license, then worked as a Piper Aircraft salesman for seven years before joining Airbus Industrie North America in 1985. ("Boeing seemed like a superpower," he says.) After rapidly working his way up through the sales and marketing departments, Leahy was named president of the U.S. subsidiary in 1994. During his American stint, Leahy saw the annual number of Airbus sales to North American carriers rise from 40 to 329. In 1996 he moved to the Toulouse headquarters with his wife and three children and became senior vice president in charge of sales, marketing, contracts and product planning.

An Airbus executive who has worked with Leahy since his arrival calls him "small of stature but hard-driving and aggressive--like Napoleon--with large eyes that can fix the most powerful gaze on you." When he gazed at Airbus, Leahy saw a stuffy organization in need of a shake-up. One of his American-style innovations, says this official, was the open office. "He literally broke down the walls between the sales guys, the contract guys and the airline analysts, and put them together in regional units. The results speak for themselves."

Leahy's doggedness was on display last October, when he and his team flew an A330 to Tel Aviv to pitch a sale to El Al pilots and board members. With only three planes at stake, the hands-on demonstration was an extraordinary effort. But Leahy wanted to show that even a company like El Al, with its close ties to the U.S., would "take a good look at our product." Two weeks later, El Al voted to buy A330s along with Boeing's 777s--the first time the carrier agreed to buy a non-U.S. plane. U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright has lobbied to roll back the sale; it's on hold pending a review of financing.

Leahy bristles at Washington's arm-twisting. "The U.S. can't go around lecturing the world on free trade--and then refuse to accept it unless American products win the market." But whatever happens next, El Al remains impressed. "Certainly the strengths Leahy picked up in America have helped him push the company forward in the past couple of years," says Nachman Klieman, spokesman for El Al. "His American magnetism attracted attention to what he had to say here."

Leahy would be the last man to discount the value of good salesmanship, but the real issue, he insists, is the quality of Airbus jets. He eagerly awaits the planned A3XX, a double-deck 550-seat mammoth with onboard sleeping areas, lounges, duty-free shops and exercise rooms, which will sell for up to $240 million apiece. "It will be a totally different way of flying," he says. The project received a huge boost last week when the British government announced it was giving some $837 million in loan aid to BAe Systems PLC, which is to make the wings for the super jumbo. Airbus will put the plane in service by 2005 if it can get the advance orders to justify the $12 billion development cost. So far, only a handful of airlines, mainly in Asia, have shown active interest. But if anyone can sell Airbus' first challenger to the venerable 747, it is John Leahy. Message to Boeing: Fasten your seat belt.

With reporting by Sarah Davis/Paris