The world’s largest aircraft manufacturer Airbus will not be able to deliver as many new jets as planned this year.
Due to defects in fuselage parts for the A320 model family, only 790 passenger aircraft are likely to find their way to customers, the DAX group announced on Wednesday in Toulouse. Previously, 820 were in the plan. According to internal information, the manufacturer has to check fuselage parts on more than 600 machines – most of which have not yet been delivered.
After the news, there were price gains on the stock exchange after Airbus shares had lost significantly in the previous days. In XETRA trading on Wednesday it increased by 4.18 percent to 198.46 euros and is thus approaching the 200 euro mark again. At the same time, the Airbus paper is trading more than a quarter more expensive than at the turn of the year.
A stock trader saw the lowering of the delivery target as “no longer a big surprise” after the fuselage defects had already become known on Monday. Aircraft that would no longer be delivered this year are expected to come onto the market in 2026. However, the mood for the share will probably remain very clouded as long as it is not clear how serious the quality defects in the parts are.
Bad news from Airbus had accumulated over the weekend: On Friday it was initially announced that A320neo jets with Pratt & Whitney engines were no longer allowed to take off in certain weather conditions with freezing fog. In the evening, Airbus announced that airlines would have to immediately reverse a software update on around 6,000 aircraft in the A320 family. On-board computers even need to be replaced on almost 100 jets.
On Monday, Airbus finally admitted quality defects in a supplier’s fuselage panels. As a result, the share price temporarily fell by more than ten percent to 182.46 euros.
According to the Bloomberg news agency, Airbus has to inspect a total of 628 aircraft because of the fuselage parts. Only 168 of the jets are already in use, the remaining 460 are still in production, Bloomberg reported on Monday, citing an internal presentation by the company.
An Airbus spokeswoman did not want to confirm these figures on Wednesday. However, there is not a need for action on all identified fuselage parts, she wrote. In addition, the number of potentially affected aircraft is decreasing day by day as Airbus makes progress with the inspections. He wants to announce this Friday how many jets the manufacturer delivered in November.
Meanwhile, Airbus boss Guillaume Faury is sticking to his financial targets for 2025: The operating profit adjusted for special items (adjusted EBIT) should reach around seven billion euros as usual. The manager still has an eye on around 4.5 billion euros for the free cash inflow before customer financing.
Faury had already had to cut back on its original delivery target last year: Because suppliers couldn’t keep up with the delivery of important parts such as engines, Airbus ultimately only handed over 766 jets to its customers instead of the originally targeted 800 aircraft. The manufacturer also missed its original delivery target in 2022 due to a shortage of parts.
Meanwhile, Airbus’ order books are full: at the end of September, the manufacturer had orders for 8,665 passenger and cargo jets. Measured against current production rates, the order backlog lasts for almost eleven years in purely mathematical terms. The most popular jets are the A320 family, the new version A320neo, which has been built for around ten years. Faury therefore wants to increase production of the series to 75 machines per month by 2027.
With more than 12,000 units delivered, the A320 is the most frequently built aircraft family in the world and has therefore overtaken the 737 jets from the troubled manufacturer Boeing in the USA. The US company has been in a deep crisis for years. After two crashes in 2018 and 2019 and a near-miss in early 2024, it is now under strict supervision by the FAA and is only allowed to ramp up production to a limited extent. Airbus and Boeing have so far dominated the global market for larger passenger and cargo jets practically alone.
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TOULOUSE (dpa-AFX)
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