Bad business when the CEO of an aircraft manufacturer has to apologize publicly. Airbus CEO Guillaume Faury did so last week on his professional network LinkedIn over a serious issue after years of apparent quiet at home. For more than seven years, accidents and economic losses became a shadow of its American competitor, Boeing. The popular Airbus A320 model has revealed flaws in its flight control system, which is no small matter in one of the world’s best-selling aircraft, with about 11,300 units taking off every day.
Despite Airbus’s quick reaction, since the incident in the navigation control software was resolved in just over 48 hours, the company’s value has fallen by €3.16 billion on the stock market since the open on Monday 1 December (losing €9.4 billion). European manufacturer, well studied Boeing caseTry to avoid remaining in the nebula of uncertainty at all costs.
The alarms of Airbus and various air safety regulatory bodies were activated more than a month ago, when an A320 aircraft of the American company JetBlue had to make an emergency landing at Tampa Airport (Florida, USA). The accident recorded on October 30 on the Cancun (Mexico) – New Jersey (USA) crossing was a response to the failure of a key flight control component, the ELAC (elevator and aileron computer). The pilot felt a short, limited landing of the plane, which was completely 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 (including the A319, A320, A321 and their variants) were recalled for an urgent change at ELAC, with practically the entire air sector affected.
The Spanish companies Iberia, Vueling and Volotea, and references such as British Airways, Lufthansa, Air France, ETA, Aer Lingus, TAP and EasyJet, received the notification from the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA). In America, companies such as LATAM, Avianca, Delta, United and American Airlines were forced to review their A320 aircraft. The latter alone operates 340 of the 480 A320 aircraft. Although the strange behavior of the Jetblue A320 did not have serious consequences for the passenger or the safety of the aircraft, the European regulatory body EASA spoke of a malfunction that “could cause uncontrolled movement of the elevator that could exceed the structural capacity of the aircraft.”
The technical department of the Spanish pilots’ union Cipla does not downplay the importance of the malfunction either. Pilot Roberto Castillo, who has spent more than 2,500 hours controlling the A320, explains, “The ELAC, Elevator and Gileron computer is the processor responsible for translating the pilot’s, or in his case the autopilot’s, commands into the horizontal (ailerons) and vertical (elevators) flight controls. Specifically, a failure identified in ELAC B L104 in commands could be given to the elevators, sending a false signal message that could not have been issued by the pilot or autopilot, which could It causes the plane to pitch, which can be disastrous at low altitudes if there is no time to react.
Is Airbus’ stability at risk or is this a setback without major consequences? After learning that the problem could be easily addressed, City analysts spoke of a setback that “appears dramatic,” but has “limited fundamental impact.” At Deutsche Bank, they highlighted “the sector’s rapid response and the priority that Airbus has given to safety.” The French Minister of Transport, Philippe Tabaro, even went to the media to ask for calm: “Airbus has assumed its responsibilities and shown complete transparency.” The investigations that Boeing was subjected to were examining whether it had concealed sensitive information from air safety authorities before various incidents occurred.
Calm appeared to have returned when, on Monday, December 1, Airbus received a second blow, again with an A320 on the stand. The new defect was discovered in the plane’s fuselage panels, most of which have not yet been delivered. Ibus acted quickly again and cited external reasons as, “a quality problem with suppliers in the fuselage panels.” All doubts revolved around the Sevilla Soviets, about which it was impossible to gather an opinion. On this occasion, 628 units were examined because the thickness of the panels covering the aircraft was sometimes excessive and sometimes insufficient.
Ibos reviewed its production lines and said it had identified “the origin of the problem. All new production panels now meet all requirements.” It then indicated to the market that it would be able to deliver 790 aircraft this year, less than the 820 aircraft initially planned. Bad news, though: the economic impact will barely show up on the short-term income statement. The management headed by Guillaume Faury maintained the economic estimates for the full year: around $7,000 million in operating profit (ebit) and pre-financing free cash flow to customers of around €4,500 million.
The weight of the A320 at Airbus gives an idea that 392 of the 507 devices distributed by the company at the end of the third quarter were from that family. The remainder is divided between the A220 (62 aircraft), A330 (20 aircraft), and A350 (33 aircraft), the latter two for long-haul. Even the Pope’s plane is an A320 (belonging to the airline ITA), whose software had to be changed in case of an emergency in Istanbul (Turkey) when the Pope was on an official trip to Turkey and Lebanon.
This classic narrow-body aircraft, designed for short and medium-haul routes, competes with the highly sought-after B737MAX. The Boeing plane may also be the most investigated plane in history for serious accidents it caused before the pandemic put the North American industry’s biggest advocates under control.
Boeing, against the ropes
The B737MAX was responsible for two fatal accidents on October 29, 2018 (Lion Air flight in Indonesia, with 189 deaths) and March 11, 2019 (Ethiopian Airlines flight in which all 157 passengers died), which led to the cessation of production of this reactor. We have been looking at nut by nut and wire by wire.
Boeing is facing a difficult turnaround despite a massive replacement of managers, a change in production systems and a response to an aggressive attack by air regulators around the world. Its most emblematic aircraft, such as Airbus’s A320, are the spearhead of the commercial strategy: as of the end of September, 330 of the 440 aircraft distributed to customers were from this family.
The North American company’s stock price was around $293 in January 2018 and is now moving around $202, with a 17.4% revaluation in 2025. Boeing’s stock market ride managed to overcome the first 737 MAX crash in 2018, with the stock hitting all-time highs in March 2019 at $440, but it can no longer handle the second crash. deadly.
The US company’s balance sheet is still buried in losses: $4.496 million in negative operating result (about 3.860 million euros) as of September, from $6.937 million in the red (5.960 million euros) a year ago. The main burden is no longer due to the impossibility of delivering B737 MAX aircraft on time, but to delays in the 777X program, which was launched in 2013 for the premiere of the machine in 2020. Despite these forecasts, the first take-off is not expected until at least 2027. The first nine months of 2024.
The American company had just ended 2024, the worst financial year in its history, with losses amounting to $11.875 million, exceeding $11.870 million in 2020, when it suffered from the epidemic and successive 737MAX accidents. Boeing even requested breathing assistance, in October last year, with a $24 billion capital increase to stabilize the course. He also reduced staff by 10% and changed the CEO. Airbus has performed well: it reported a positive net result of $4,232 million in 2024. It is now seeking to prevent the crisis from settling in its factories.
In addition to incidents that predated the pandemic, Boeing made the news again last year for the loss of a fuselage panel on an Alaska Airlines plane and, much worse, in June 2025 for the downing of an Air India 787 Dreamliner. The latest attack left 240 people dead near Ahmedabad Airport in western India.
High pressure
Aside from issues affecting what matters most: aviation safety, Boeing and Airbus are working under intense pressure in their factories. Amid the surge in demand for aircraft, they are still suffering from a weak supply chain due to the impact of Covid-19. This was the impact that prompted Airbus to launch a $1 million financing program so that its suppliers could overcome the lack of activity during the pandemic and re-arm themselves as soon as they were able to resume activity. To this situation, which was unknown until then, was added the increase in prices of basic materials and energy costs, caused by the Russian invasion of Ukraine, or the tariff war that continued throughout this year by the United States. Trump administration.
Consulting firm Oliver Wyman estimates that aircraft delivery delays affected a record 17,000 units worldwide in 2024, forcing airlines to review their route growth and fleet renewal plans. The number of annual orders reached about 13,000 aircraft annually between 2010 and 2019, which gives an idea of the snowball that grows year after year. As a result of delays in the supply chain. The aforementioned Oliver Wyman report, published in mid-October, reveals that the average delivery time for orders has risen to 6.8 years in 2024, compared to 4.5 years in 2018, which entails huge costs for airlines. There is an additional $4,200 million (about 3,606 million euros) due to additional fuel consumption for older aircraft; $3.1 billion more than expected in fleet maintenance bill; $2.6 billion to lease engines until new planes arrive, and $1.4 billion for surplus spare parts in stock.
Among the goals of the two largest manufacturers, Airbus and Boeing, is to increase the rate of aircraft departures from their factories. Major airlines are lining up with multi-million-dollar orders, and there are even some such as Ryanair, which is blaming its supplier Boeing for being unable to meet its growth plans due to a shortage of aircraft. CEO of the American company Robert Kelly Ortberg reiterated the focus on “safety and quality” for the B737 product and entered into an agreement with the US Civil Aviation Regulatory Authority (FAA) to increase the model’s production rate from the current limit of 38 to 42 units per month.
It was November 2023, when Alberto Gutierrez, then president of Airbus Spain, warned a group of journalists of what was coming: “The industry cannot handle the demand for aircraft,” and threw an arrow at the eternal adversary based in Arlington (Virginia, USA), “Those who can wait, prefer Airbus.”