Airbus delivered 735 commercial aircraft last year, more than ever. The group has thus expanded its position as number one in the industry. The European aircraft manufacturer not only increased the number of deliveries by eleven percent, but also exceeded its goal of handing over at least 720 aircraft to customers. CEO Guillaume Faury spoke on Thursday of a “milestone for the Airbus commercial aircraft business with exceptional orders and deliveries at the upper end of targets.”
The new Airbus division boss Christian Scherer said that aviation had recovered from the Corona crisis faster than expected. This applies not only to the demand for short-haul aircraft, but also for wide-body aircraft such as the Airbus A350. In total, Airbus received 2,319 gross orders, minus cancellations, 2,094. Of these, 1,835 were A320-Family of short and medium-haul aircraft, 300 to wide-body aircraft. The order backlog reached 8,600 commercial aircraft.
The competitor Boeing from the USA cannot report such success reports, on the contrary. The US aircraft manufacturer increased its deliveries from 480 to 528 aircraft, but is still far behind Airbus. Above all, Boeing has another image problem: Last Friday, at an altitude of almost 4,900 meters, there was a window with an outer wall and cladding from a new machine of the type 737 Max 9 Broken. The US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has now announced a formal investigation.