Airbus Revises Commercial Aircraft Production Targets

TOULOUSE—Ever since Airbus has announced its ambitious plan to build 75 A320neo-family aircraft per month, it was faced with the counterargument: demand may be there to sustain that level of production, but the supply chain will not be able to cope with it.

As it turned out, the doubters in the industry and the financial community have had their point—the ramp-up so far went slower than Airbus had hoped amid a myriad of constraints in the supply chain. And when Airbus revealed its financial results for 2025, the company had to admit again that the going will remain tough. And Airbus has identified the one supplier who is primarily to blame.

The situation in the supply chain is changing. Airbus executives are saying that a lot of the issues are actually improving or are about to be resolved. And when they are, things could get better much quicker. On the other hand, some constraints remain: Airbus singled out Pratt & Whitney for its inability to deliver the number of engines to the final assembly lines that Airbus had purchased. And the turn-around of former Spirit AeroSystems sites producing parts and components for the A220 and the A350 is an ongoing, complex and lengthy task.

According to its latest guidance, Airbus is finally revising downward its targets for the A320neo family, but not by much. The company now expects to reach a rate of 70 to 75 aircraft for the narrowbodies by the end of 2027, when that year was originally the deadline for rate 75. That level of production is now to be achieved “thereafter”—and Airbus CEO Guillaume Faury left open what exactly that means.

On the A220, also hit by the combination of engine shortages and issues around the former Spirit facilities, Airbus is now moving to a rate of 13 by 2028 and 12 later this year, but it appears to remain below the 14 originally targeted for the foreseeable future. Widebody rates have not been updated, but Airbus is known to be working on a big plan to significantly increase output of the A350 in particular over the next several years.

Overall, Airbus is now targeting 870 commercial aircraft deliveries for 2026, 77 more than it managed in 2025. The guidance is below what some analysts had forecasted, with some expecting more than 900 deliveries.

As for the A320neo family ramp up, Faury clearly blamed Pratt & Whitney as the main root cause. There is a “shortage of engines from Pratt compared to accepted orders for 2026,” he said, and warned, “We want to enforce our contractual rights. We had to significantly reduce the number of planned aircraft.”

Faury criticized Pratt & Whitney’s allocation of more engines to the in-service fleet rather than to Airbus’ final assembly line as the number of parked aircraft linked to the PW1100G’s durability issues “has not gone down as fast as the customers have been expecting.” Airbus is therefore “very dissatisfied, we don’t agree with it.” The consequences of Pratt’s decision to prioritize the aftermarket has “very negative consequences for us. It impacts our own ability to deliver,” he said.

But Faury made clear that Airbus does not accept the current status: “We want to enforce our contractual rights.”

By contrast, he applauded CFM International for being a “reliable source of engines.”

At the recent Singapore Airshow, Pratt & Whitney’s president of commercial engines, Rick Deurloo, had said that the company was close to an agreement with Airbus over firming up PW1100G geared turbofan (GTF) deliveries. “We’re working through this right now with them, so I’m confident, like every year, we will reach agreement with our good friends at Airbus.”

Pratt’s lower level of engine deliveries is going to mainly impact 2026, according to Faury, but 2027 should be closer to Airbus’ original expectations leading to rate 75. After 2027, the constraint “will most likely go away.” In the short term, “we have to bite the bullet of the very painful and unsatisfactory situation,” he said.

While engines are now identified as the main showstopper, other constraints have to be dealt with, too. Airbus had to slow down A320neo deliveries late last year after a quality problem with fuselage panel supplier Sofitec emerged. Rectifying this will still keep Airbus busy through the first half of the year.

On the A220, engines are a bottleneck, too, but so are the Spirit AeroSystems sites that Airbus has begun to integrate. “We have begun consolidating the five new sites to secure operational stability and continuity,” Airbus CFO Thomas Toepfer said. “Headwinds,” a term for the financial burden to carry in 2026, are going to be “slightly higher in 2026 than anticipated,” he said.

Also, the A220 ramp-up is “paced,” among others, “by the balance between supply and demand,” Toepfer said. In other words, more orders are needed to sustain much higher production.

That is not the case for the A350. In fact, Faury supported the new CEO of Airbus’ commercial aircraft business, Lars Wagner, who had recently made clear that he would like to see higher production rates for the widebody. “I would like to see significantly higher rates in the A350,” Faury said, but a decision on them is “not for today.”

Faury also sees demand for a larger version of the aircraft, which would be a “natural evolution of the product,” he said.