Airbus chief executive Guillaume Faury acknowledges that the airframer is again having to cope with a heavily-backloaded fourth quarter, but views it as a consequence of trying to ramp-up production while addressing unexpected disruptive events.
To achieve its full-year target of 770 deliveries, the manufacturer needs to hand over 273 aircraft in the final quarter – substantially more than half the 497 delivered during the first nine months of 2024.
Such fourth-quarter pressure has been a persistent characteristic of Airbus’s delivery schedules, but Faury insists the airframer is “not doomed to be backloaded”.
“We’ve been hit by problems, that we weren’t expecting in the course of the year, that are impacting the back end of the production process,” he said, speaking during a results briefing on 30 October.
Faury says the final assembly line is “vulnerable [to] a low level of buffer stocks”, including engines, seats and landing-gear equipment, which leaves the company with “very limited possibilities to react”.
Airbus is trying to ramp-up production in the face of continuing supply-chain problems, while the company has also had to cope with the impact of events such as the intense hurricane Milton which struck the US south coast in early October.
“The underlying production process is more linear,” insists Faury. “That’s why we believe we’ll reach about 770 [deliveries] for this year.”
He admits that, with supply-chain issues potentially affecting A350 ramp-up, the company is likely to have a “difficult start” to 2025 – suggesting the year will be backloaded from the outset.
But he adds: “I have difficulties looking at it as a structural issue. It’s more one which is linked to circumstances.
“When you’re in ramp up – and we’re in a significant ramp-up – each and every delay leads to big backloading at a certain point in time. And that’s where we are. It’s frustrating, but that’s what it is.”
While the airframer has put in place a number of initiatives to increase transparency with suppliers and visibility on programmes – and implemented joint improvement plans for mutual assistance – Faury says that changing the fundamental structure of the supply chain is “almost impossible” for an ongoing programme.
He believes the next two to three years “will continue to be challenging” given that Airbus will be placing increasing demands on suppliers even as they recover.
“I unfortunately believe we’re turning all the stones that we reasonably can at the moment,” says Faury.
“To be candid, by end of last year, we thought we had put the bulk of problems behind us. Now we’re hit with new ones of a different nature – they’re with large suppliers, strong ones.
“The problems with small suppliers are mostly digested – at least that’s what I want to believe, based on what I see. But we have to [deal also with] large suppliers.”
Single-aisle engine manufacturers, he says are “probably the ones facing the most difficult situation”, because they are having to satisfy both the ramp-up demand and the needs of operators’ in-service fleets.
Faury says he is also “monitoring closely” the unresolved Boeing machinists’ strike. He says it is not having a direct impact on Airbus, but there are potential indirect effects which could cause “additional disruption to an already-tense supply chain”.
