The US aircraft manufacturer Boeing is in crisis. Things are going all the better for its European competitor Airbus: Last year the manufacturer received more orders than ever before.
The European aircraft manufacturer Airbus has once again left its struggling competitor Boeing far behind in 2023. Despite tense supply chains, Airbus handed over 735 commercial aircraft to its customers, as he announced in Toulouse in the evening. That was 15 more aircraft than Airbus boss Guillaume Faury had targeted. US rival Boeing increased deliveries from 480 to 528 aircraft, lagging behind Airbus for the fifth time in a row due to home-made problems.
Faury spoke of a “milestone for the Airbus commercial aircraft business with exceptional orders and deliveries at the top end of targets.” However, Airbus will probably not reach the record number of 863 aircraft delivered in 2019 this year, he said.
More orders than ever
Christian Scherer, managing director of the commercial aircraft division, said that aviation had recovered from the Corona crisis faster than expected. Overall, Airbus received 2,319 gross new orders last year, minus cancellations there were 2,094. Neither Airbus nor its only relevant rival Boeing had ever booked so many orders in one year before. Of these, 1,835 were from the A320 family of short- and medium-haul aircraft and 300 were from wide-body aircraft. The order backlog swelled to almost 8,600 commercial aircraft.
Scherer was confident that Airbus would achieve its goal of building 75 A320 aircraft per month by 2026 – “even if it’s a lot of work.” He admitted: “We cannot yet deliver as quickly as some would like.”
CEO Faury said that the situation had improved in 2023 in that individual suppliers were no longer the bottleneck. “But we also demand more from our suppliers, so the supply chains are still tense.”