Airbus has rich man’s problems. In a single week, from December 12 to 19, the European aircraft manufacturer recorded no less than 537 orders for commercial aircraft. In this total, a giant contract concluded with Turkish Airlines. The Turkish company has committed to 220 aircraft, including 150 medium-haul A321s and 70 long-haul A350s, plus 135 optional aircraft. An order valued, list price, at 53 billion dollars (nearly 48 billion euros). Added to this was a contract for 157 additional A320neos ordered on Tuesday, December 19, by the British low-cost airline Easyjet, for $15 billion.
With this avalanche of contracts, Airbus will easily beat its previous record which dates from 2013 when it recorded 1,503 orders. Tuesday, December 27, it had 1,938 additional planes in its holds.
With almost 9,000 aircraft in store, the aircraft manufacturer has secured nearly twelve years of guaranteed production. An industrialist’s dream. It must be said that in Toulouse, as in Seattle (Washington), at the rival Boeing, we have no longer touched land since the end of the crisis linked to Covid-19. It even seems that after the pandemic passes, the trees reach the sky. According to the American group’s forecasts, the number of commercial aircraft in service will double by 2044, from 24,500 aircraft today to 48,575. A figure in contradiction with the need to fight global warming , but which illustrates the expected growth in air traffic. An estimate validated by the International Air Transport Association which has sounded the alarm to airlines, signaling that they will have to recruit between 500,000 and 600,000 pilots to take control of all the aircraft that will crisscross the skies of the world within twenty years.
If this influx of orders is good news for France’s foreign trade and the continued employment of Airbus employees, it is starting to weigh more and more on the company’s logistics. Particularly on delivery times which continue to lengthen. Before the Covid-19 crisis, companies had to wait a minimum of five years before being delivered. Today, an additional period of two years is required. It is also not impossible that the proliferation of giant contracts in recent months is one of the responses found by companies to try to shorten delivery times. Indeed, Boeing and Airbus would be more inclined to find close delivery slots for major customers than for those ordering only a few units.
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