Bad business when the CEO of an aircraft manufacturer has to apologize. The CEO of Airbus, Guillaume Faury, did so last week on the professional network Linkedin for a serious problem after a long period of apparent calm in the house. For more than seven years, accidents and economic losses have been the shadow of American rival Boeing. Today, the popular Airbus A320 model revealed flaws in the flight control system, and that’s no small feat for one of the world’s best-selling planes, with some 11,300 units taking off every day.
Despite Airbus’ rapid reaction, since the navigation control software incident was resolved in just over 48 hours, the company’s value has decreased by 3.160 million euros on the stock market since the opening on Monday, December 1 (it lost 9.4 billion). The European manufacturer, who had carefully studied the Boeing affairtry to avoid staying in the nebula of uncertainty at all costs.
The alarms of Airbus and various air safety regulators were triggered more than a month ago, when an American JetBlue A320 had to make an emergency landing at Tampa airport (Florida, USA). The incident recorded on October 30 on the Cancun (Mexico)-New Jersey (United States) crossing was in response to the failure of a key flight control element, the ELAC (Elevator and Aileron Computer). The pilot felt a brief and limited descent of the plane, totally unexpected. It was later learned that the software had been damaged by intense solar radiation.
As a result, on Friday 28 November, 6,000 units of the A320 family (which includes the A319, A320, A321 and their various variants) were called for an urgent change to the ELAC, affecting virtually the entire aviation sector.
The Spanish companies Iberia, Vueling and Volotea, as well as references such as British Airways, Lufthansa, Air France, ITA, Aer Lingus, TAP and Easyjet, have received the notification from the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA). In the United States, companies like Latam, Avianca, Delta, United and American Airlines have also had to review their A320s. The latter alone intervened on 340 of its 480 A320s. Although the strange behavior of the Jetblue A320 did not have serious consequences for the passenger or for the integrity of the aircraft, the European regulator EASA spoke of a failure which “may cause uncontrolled movement of the elevator which could exceed the structural capacity of the aircraft”. Official Airbus sources report that “the ELAC security issue is almost completely resolved. All aircraft have received the software update and can fly, except those in storage or undergoing intensive maintenance, and these must be updated before being returned to service.”
The technical department of the Spanish pilots’ union Sepla does not at all minimize the importance of the breakdown. Pilot Roberto Castelo, with more than 2,500 hours at the controls of the A320, explains that “the ELAC, Elevator and Aileron Computer, is the processor responsible for translating orders from the pilot, or in his case the autopilot, to the horizontal (ailerons) and vertical (elevator) flight controls. issued by the pilot or autopilot, this could cause the aircraft to descend, which at low altitude can be catastrophic if there is no reaction time.
Is Airbus’ stability in danger or is this a minor setback? After learning the problem could be easily fixed, Citi analysts called it a setback that “appears dramatic” but with “limited fundamental impact.” At Deutsche Bank, they highlighted “the rapid response of the sector and the priority that Airbus has placed on safety”. The French Minister of Transport, Philippe Tabarot, even spoke to the media to ask for calm: “Airbus has taken its responsibilities and demonstrated total transparency.” The investigations to which Boeing has been subjected have weighed, in case it had hidden sensitive information from aviation safety authorities before various accidents.
Airbus received a second hard blow on Monday December 1, and still with the A320 in the pillory. The new defect was detected in the fuselage panels of aircraft, most of which have not yet been delivered. The company again acted quickly and pointed to external causes, “a quality problem with suppliers in the fuselage panels”. All suspicion is directed towards the Sevillian company Sofitec, on which it was not possible to obtain an opinion. On this occasion, 628 units were inspected with a scanner because the thickness of the panels was sometimes excessive and insufficient at others.
Airbus detected what was then a possible failure back in the summer and it now has the results of its analysis. It has reviewed its production lines and claims to have identified “the root of the problem” and that “all new production panels already meet all requirements”. According to a company spokesperson, “this is an issue that does not compromise quality or safety.”
The factory’s slippage translates into less aircraft production capacity: Airbus has indicated to the market that it could finally deliver 790 planes this year, compared to the 820 planned before the fuselage fiasco. Bad news, even if the economic impact will barely be seen in the short-term income statement. Management led by Gillame Faury maintained the economic estimates for the whole year: around 7 billion operating profits (Ebit) and free cash flow before financing to customers of around 4.5 billion euros.
The weight of the A320 at Airbus suggests that 392 of the 507 aircraft that the company had distributed at the end of the third quarter belonged to this family. The rest is distributed between the A220 (62 units), the A330 (20 aircraft) and the A350 (33), the last two being intended for long-distance routes. Even the Pope’s plane is an A320 (from the airline ITA), whose software had to be urgently modified in Istanbul (Turkey) while the Pontiff was on an official trip to Turkey and Lebanon.
This narrow-body classic, designed for short and medium-haul routes, competes with the highly sought-after B737MAX. The Boeing plane is perhaps also the most studied plane in history due to the serious accidents it caused before the pandemic and which defeated the largest representative of the North American industry.
Boeing, on the ropes
The B737MAX was involved in the fatal accidents of October 29, 2018 (Lion Air flight in Indonesia, with 189 deaths) and March 11, 2019 (Ethiopian Airlines flight during which all 157 occupants of the plane died), which forced production to stop. This was looked at nut by nut and thread by thread.
Boeing is struggling to recover despite the massive change in management, changing production systems and responding to the offensive from airline regulators around the world. Its most emblematic aircraft, such as the A320 for Airbus, are the spearhead of the commercial strategy: until the end of September, 330 of the 440 aircraft distributed among customers were from the B737 family.
The stock of the North American company was around $293 in January 2018 and is now moving around $202, with a revaluation of 17.4% in 2025. Boeing’s stock market managed to overcome the first 737 MAX accident in 2018, reaching an all-time high in March 2019 at $440, but it could not overcome the second fatal incident.
The American company’s balance sheet is still buried in losses: $4.496 million in negative operating profit (around 3.860 million euros) in September, compared to $6.937 million in the red (5.960 million euros) a year ago. The main burden is no longer due to the inability to deliver the B737 MAX on time but to delays in the 777X program. Despite expectations of a premiere in 2020, the first takeoff is not expected until at least 2027. Meanwhile, on this side of the Atlantic, Airbus announces an operating profit of 3.365 million in September, up 25% compared to the first nine months of 2024.
The American company had already closed the worst financial year in its history in 2024, with losses of 11.875 million dollars, exceeding the 11.870 million in 2020, when it was distressed by the pandemic and the consecutive accidents of the 737MAX. Boeing even needed respiratory assistance last October, with a capital increase of $24 billion to stabilize the course. It also reduced its workforce by 10% and changed CEOs. Airbus is doing well: it declared a positive net result of 4.232 million in 2024. It is now seeking to avoid a crisis taking hold in its factories.
In addition to the pre-pandemic accidents, Boeing was in the news again last year for the loss of a fuselage panel from an Alaska Airlines plane and, much worse, in June 2025 for the fall to the ground of an Air India 787 Dremaliner. The latter left 240 dead near Ahmedabad airport, in western India.
High pressure
Beyond the most important issues of flight safety, Boeing and Airbus operate under conditions of intense stress in their factories. In the midst of an explosion in demand for aircraft, they are still suffering from the weakening of the supply chain due to the impact of Covid-19. The impact has been such that Airbus has launched a million-dollar financing program so that its suppliers can survive the lack of activity during the pandemic and rearm once they can resume activity. Added to this situation, hitherto unknown, is the increase in the prices of raw materials and energy costs, derived from the Russian invasion of Ukraine, or the tariff war maintained throughout this year by the Trump administration.
Consultancy Oliver Wyman estimates that delays in aircraft deliveries have affected a record 17,000 units worldwide in 2024, forcing airlines to review their plans for route growth and fleet renewal. The number of annual orders was around 13,000 aircraft per year between 2010 and 2019, which gives an idea of a snowball that grows larger from year to year. Due to delays in the supply chain. A report by the aforementioned Oliver Wyman published in mid-October reveals that the average order delivery time increased to 6.8 years in 2024, compared to 4.5 years in 2018, which results in high costs for airlines. There is an additional $4.2 billion (around €3.606 million) due to the additional fuel consumption of older aircraft; $3.1 billion more than expected in the fleet maintenance bill; 2.6 billion dollars for the rental of engines while waiting for the arrival of the new planes, and 1.4 billion for the surplus of spare parts in stocks.
The two largest manufacturers, Airbus and Boeing, have among their objectives to increase the rate of aircraft output from their factories. Major airlines are lining up with multi-million dollar orders and there are even ones like Ryanair, which blames its supplier Boeing for not being able to realize its growth plans due to a lack of planes. The CEO of the American company, Robert Kelly Ortberg reiterated the emphasis on “safety and quality” of the B737 product and reached an agreement with the US civil aviation regulator (FAA) to increase the model’s production rate from the current limit of 38 to 42 units per month.
It was in November 2023 when Alberto Gutiérrez, then president of Airbus Spain, had already warned a group of journalists of what was going to happen: “The industry cannot cope with the demand for aircraft,” he said, and he threw a dart at the eternal adversary based in Arlington (Virginia, United States), “those who can wait prefer Airbus”.
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