“Following a recent quality issue at a supplier regarding fuselage panels, impacting deliveries of the A320 family, Airbus SE is updating its forecast for commercial aircraft deliveries for 2025,” the company said in a statement.
However, he insisted that this did not mean revising the financial forecast he presented when presenting the first nine-month results on October 29, which meant an adjusted net operating result (ebit) of about 7,000 million euros and cash flow of about 4,500 million.
Detect “quality problems”
The company reported on Tuesday that up to 628 A320 aircraft could be inspected after “quality problems” were discovered in their metal partitions, although it clarified that this “does not necessarily mean that all aircraft are affected.”
The company explained in a letter to Agence France-Presse in response to information that “the total number of potentially affected aircraft, whether in production or in service, is decreasing day by day with the progress of inspections that allow the identification of aircraft that require specific procedures.” Bloomberg and Why Echo?.
The company said that the 628 planes mentioned by these media are “an estimate of the maximum number” of planes that can be inspected. The company added that Airbus is “reviewing all potentially affected aircraft, knowing that only a portion of them will require further intervention.” “They always act this way when they encounter quality problems in their supply chain,” he explained.
The failure was discovered after an accident in Florida
The manufacturer announced on Monday that it had found “quality issues” in the metal panels intended for its successful A320 single-aisle model, noting that this incident had been “identified” and “restrained.”
The European Community also announced on Friday night that 6,000 A320 aircraft had to urgently change their flight control computer software, which is vulnerable to solar radiation.
This announcement came in the wake of an incident at the end of October in the United States with a JetBlue flight, where the ship, which was flying from Cancun (Mexico) to Newark, near New York, suddenly lost altitude without the intervention of the pilot and was forced to land in Tampa, Florida.
Aircraft deliveries have declined since 2019
Next Friday, the company is scheduled to publish the numbers of aircraft it delivered until the end of November. As of the end of October, it had placed 585 aircraft in the hands of its customers, which put it far short of its initial target of 820 aircraft.
In 2024, Airbus delivered 766 aircraft, which is more than in 2023 (there were 735 aircraft at that time) but four fewer than its last target, which it had already revised downward last year in light of the difficulties it had in maintaining the rhythm.
This year, until the end of the summer, there were significant delays, especially due to problems with the supply of the engine, especially from the manufacturer CFM, the joint venture between the French companies Safran and the American General Electric.
Before the pandemic, which severely disrupted the global aviation industry with a drastic drop in production from which it has yet to recover, Airbus delivered 863 aircraft in 2019.
RML (AFP, EFI)