Fresh snags in Hamburg hit Airbus jet deliveries
For two years Airbus faced a shortage of engines and had to slow jet deliveries. Now engines are arriving fast, but fresh snags mean a Hamburg plant that assembles best-selling jets is having trouble absorbing them, industry sources said.
The internal snags have exacerbated delivery delays that leave Airbus with the challenge of delivering 76 single-aisle planes per month in the last quarter, according to consultants Flight Ascend, 9.6% more than its previous record.
Airbus is working flat out to maintain 2018’s target of 800 total aircraft deliveries needed to meet financial goals, and singleaisle assembly lines are its most important cash cow.
“They’re late; everyone is mad at them. They’ve been hiding behind the engine problems,” a senior aircraft buyer said, referring to the tendency of supply chains to focus on the most visible laggards without always tackling problems in waiting.
Other industry sources say Hamburg may not be the immediate source of the problem, but that this facility has felt the worst impact in Airbus’s global jigsaw of assembly plants because it is introducing a new version of A321 just as production is running faster than ever. That illustrates a wider challenge as plane makers struggle to introduce new models and fix technical issues without pausing record output increases, a task some compare to taking the steepest hill in a cycle race at a sprint while fixing a tyre.
Deliveries of the A321, a large single-aisle jet mainly made in Germany, spiked higher in May as delayed engines started coming in but slowed down again in September, Airbus data shows.
Now, Airbus is introducing a new A321neo ACF version, which offers more flexible cabins but requires complex configuration. One of the sources said the Hamburg assembly plant was facing some problems with cabling the jets, stirring memories of cabling problems that plagued the A380 superjumbo a decade ago. Airbus had no immediate comment.
The ramp-up has also increased quality problems, leading to more delays and a queue of undelivered jets, Reuters reported in September.
Despite disruption, Airbus has said it is confident it will meet single-aisle production goals of 60 a month spread across all its factories in mid2019, up from about 55 now.
Sources say Airbus is also preparing to make capacity of 65 single-aisle jets a month available by the end of 2019, though there has been no decision on whether to implement this. Ultimately, Airbus aims to raise output as high as 70-73 to serve record travel demand and says planes offering premium seats such as the A321neo ACF will help to drive this.
Hamburg’s woes highlight the operational issues at stake as plane-making chief Guillaume Faury prepares to become CE in April. His two main industrial lieutenants, Tom Williams and Didier Evrard, retire at end-year.
Insiders say Faury, who has made production the “priority of priorities” for this quarter, will not be replaced as president of commercial jets but may appoint an operations leader.