David Learmount/TOULOUSE
Having just delivered its 2,000th aircraft, Airbus Industrie predicts that it will achieve the 3,000 target within three years. Germany's Lufthansa, Airbus' largest single airline customer, took delivery last week of the 2,000th, an A340-300.
Deliveries of the whole Airbus range are rolling off the assembly lines in Toulouse, France and Hamburg, Germany at 20-25 aircraft a month, set to beat the record 229 deliveries of last year. With a firm order backlog of 1,300, Airbus says production will increase further, but will not say whether it will cap the rate soon, to avoid boom/bust production cycles.
Production milestones paint a clear picture of the Airbus expansion phenomenon, which allowed the consortium to claim last year, for the first time, that it had won a 50% share of the net orders value:
• from handover of the first A300 in May 1974, it took Airbus 15 years to achieve the 500th delivery, in June 1989;
• four more years elapsed to the 1,000th shipment, in March 1993;
• another four years brought the 1,500th delivery, in February 1997;
• on 18 May this year, just over two years later, the 2,000th aircraft was handed over;
• Airbus predicts that the big jump from the 2,000th to the 3,000th delivery will be achieved in 2002.
Source: Flight International
