Airbus Group still believes it can reach a target of delivering at least 50 A350s this year, but the company remains concerned about cabin supply-chain issues.
Speaking during a first-quarter results briefing, chief financial officer Harald Wilhelm said the target was still “feasible” but that it was becoming “tougher as time goes by”.
Wilhelm says the company has applied a “lot of effort and pressure” to rectify the cabin interior concerns.
He says the situation has “stabilised” but points out that this only means it “didn’t deteriorate further.”
“[We] cannot say that it has significantly improved,” he adds. “But at least we know what the delivery performance is, and we can accommodate.”
Wilhelm acknowledges that A350 programme chief Patrick Piedrafita has an “uphill battle” to put production back on track, noting that there are some 40 aircraft in the final assembly line in Toulouse.
He stresses that the ramp-up challenges are not isolated to the interiors sector, pointing out that the airframer is having to keep outstanding work – such as missing components – below the critical threshold that would otherwise generate “chaos” within the limited capacity of the final assembly line. “We won’t allow that [breach] to happen,” he says.
Source: Cirium Dashboard
