Tuesday, January 11, 2022
Rival Boeing beaten again
Airbus remains the world’s largest aircraft manufacturer
Airbus will sell more than 600 aircraft in 2021 – US arch-rival Boeing cannot quite keep up, after all, the flight bans for the 737 Max model are still heavy. Despite the Corona crisis, both manufacturers are benefiting from increasing demand for modern jets.
Airbus delivered more than 600 traffic jets in the second Corona year and defended its position as the world’s largest aircraft manufacturer. Thanks to a final spurt in December, 611 machines found their way to customers over the year as a whole, as the European manufacturer announced in the evening. In all likelihood, the Dax group stayed ahead of US rival Boeing for the third year in a row, which had delivered 302 passenger and cargo jets by the end of November.
The level of 863 deliveries from the record year 2019 was unattainable for Airbus. After the slump in air traffic in spring 2020, the manufacturer cut production by around 40 percent and handed over 566 machines in the year as a whole. “Even if there are still uncertainties, we are on the right track to increase production in the course of 2022,” said Airbus boss Guillaume Faury. Because the demand for new machines has clearly picked up again. Overall, Airbus collected orders for 771 passenger and cargo aircraft last year, around twice as many as in the previous year. After deducting 264 cancellations, 507 remained.
While the business with large long-haul aircraft is suffering from the travel restrictions, short- and medium-haul jets were particularly in demand at Airbus. The A320 family, its new edition A320neo and the smaller A220 accounted for 533 of the machines delivered – a share of 87 percent. In the case of the wide-body jets, the A350 had 55 deliveries and the A330neo 18 deliveries. In addition, Airbus delivered the last five copies of the giant double-decker A380 jet, the production of which was discontinued due to lack of demand. In terms of new orders, the A320neo family alone accounted for 661 aircraft – a share of 86 percent. The largest orders came from the aircraft financier ALC and the airlines Wizz Air, Frontier and United.
Boeing is following the flight bans of 737 Max
Some of the new long-haul version A321XLR are also included in the orders for the A320neo Family. With this model, flights from Central Europe to the USA, for example, should pay off with fewer passengers than before. The first flight should take place this year, said sales manager Christian Scherer. The first delivery is still planned for 2023. After the manufacturer cut production of the A320 family from around 60 to 40 machines per month during the crisis, it is now heading for records. After around 45 jets per month at the end of 2021, it should gradually increase to 65 planes by summer 2023, as Faury confirmed. That would be more than ever before.
For the middle of the decade, the manager has an eye on up to 75 machines per month. Competitor Boeing is still suffering from the aftermath of the flight bans for its medium-haul jet 737 Max. While deliveries of the model are now increasing again and large new orders have come in, the manufacturer had to suspend delivery of its long-haul jet 787 “Dreamliner” for months. He wants to announce on Tuesday how many deliveries the group made last year and what the order balance looks like.