An Airbus worker works on an Airbus A350 aircraft part on the Airbus Atlantic factory in Bouguenais near Nantes, western France, on February 29, 2024.
Sebastien Salom-gomis | Afp | Getty Images
Airbus is increasing production of its A350 planes due to consumer demand quite than the continued crisis at U.S. rival Boeing, in line with the French aircraft maker’s chief financial officer.
Toulouse-based Airbus announced plans on Thursday to extend the production rate of the long-haul aircraft to 12 units per 30 days by 2028.
“I would say it clearly reflects the very strong commercial momentum that we are seeing for the A350,” Airbus Chief Financial Officer Thomas Toepfer told CNBC’s Charlotte Reed on Thursday when asked if the corporate was affected by the instability at Boeing advantages.
Airbus reported gross industrial aircraft orders of 170 within the quarter, almost half of which were A350 variants.
“So [we experience] “We have very, very strong order intake,” Toepfer said, adding that he expects the momentum to continue.
Aviation companies around the world say they are facing supply chain and production problems and claim they are struggling to quickly meet airlines’ red-hot demand for new planes. Gross orders for Airbus commercial aircraft jumped to 2,319 in all of 2023, up from 1,078 in 2022.
Boeing has cut production of its best-selling 737 Max, the model at the center of its crisis, after it was involved in two fatal crashes and a mid-flight incident in which a door plug broke.
Toepfer said the supply chain environment had not improved in recent months and was “broad-based” across all materials, complicating Airbus’ efforts to increase production.
He repeated his comment that Boeing’s problems were not helpful for the industry in general or for Airbus in particular.
“It creates additional pressure and additional impact on the supply chain and on some individual suppliers, and we are feeling that too,” he said. “That it is not helpful for the ramp-up of the entire industry and also of Airbus.”
Toepfer said Airbus has had “very constructive discussions” about efficiency improvements with the manufacturer Spirit, which is involved Takeover talks with Boeing amid money flow challenges. Spirit supplies each aircraft manufacturers.
“We may also be thinking about taking over the work packages that Spirit produces for Airbus because they are very important to us and of course our top priority is to ensure that the supply of these work packages is secured,” he continued .
Airbus’ quarterly results fell in need of analysts’ expectations on Thursday, posting a 25% year-on-year decline in operating profit to 577 million euros, or $619 million, in the primary quarter, in line with Reuters. Boeing reported a quarterly lack of $355 million on Wednesday.