Airbus has hiked this year’s full-year delivery forecast by 10% compared with its performance last year, and by 6% on its original 2025 target.
The airframer is looking to deliver 870 commercial aircraft over the course of 2026, having managed 793 last year – short of its planned output of 820.
While Airbus has been dealing with supply-chain pressures, it attributed last year’s shortfall largely to a quality issue on A320neo-family fuselage panels which emerged towards the end of the year.
Speaking during a full-year briefing on 19 February, chief executive Guillaume Faury said the panel issue was a ”significant event” that “put pressure on our abilltiy to deliver in an already [backloaded] year”.
He says Airbus expects the residual operational impact of the panel issue to be “contained and spread mainly over the first half of [this] year”.
Faury points out that, despite the delivery impact, the airframer turned in a strong financial performance after it “successfully navigated a complex and dynamic operating environment”.
Higher deliveries, along with growth in services, lifted commercial aircraft revenues by 4% to €52.6 billion ($62 billion).
Airbus handed over 57 A350s and 36 A330s last year, along with 607 A320neo-family jets and 92 A220s.
The airframer’s adjusted earnings for the commercial aircraft sector rose by 7.4% to €5.47 billion – an improvement driven not only by the delivery numbers but also favourable hedge rates and lower research and development expenditure. Tariffs “partly offset” the earnings figure, it adds.
Airbus’s backlog last year reached 8,754 aircraft, a record level, as it took net orders for 889 jets.
