Though Airbus sees the USA as a promising market for the ACJ TwoTwenty, its smallest business aircraft is absent from NBAA-BACE after appearing at the previous two Las Vegas shows.
Airbus Corporate Jets president Chadi Saade insists this is no bad thing. The three examples delivered to customers are in such demand, none could be released for the event.
Instead, the European airframer – which unveiled the executive version of the former CSeries narrowbody airliner in October 2020, two years after taking over the troubled Montreal-based programme from Bombardier and rebranding it the A220 – has a cabin mock-up on display.
The cabin is key to the ACJ TwoTwenty’s appeal because what Toulouse dubs its “Xtra Large Bizjet” has more than twice the volume of traditional large-cabin jets that command a similar price, says Saade, who took over the top job at Airbus’s corporate jet arm last year.
That 72.5sq m (780sq ft) floor space allows for the cabin to be split into six distinct zones, two of which can come with a king size bed and en-suite with an almost 2m (6.5ft)-high rain shower. There is room for two 55in television monitors.
“Size is the differentiator with this aircraft,” says Adam White, chief executive of Comlux America, which has an exclusive contract to outfit the first 17 aircraft and is about to deliver its fourth example, with the fifth to follow in the first half of next year. “It’s a true living space, more like a high-end hotel than a business jet.”
The ACJ TwoTwenty also has a cargo capacity that greatly trumps that of its rivals, thanks to its airliner hold and Pratt & Whitney PW1500G engines that are under-wing rather than mounted on the rear fuselage. This is despite supplemental belly fuel tanks that boost the aircraft’s range to 5,650nm (10,500km).
That distance, of course, is well below the 7,000nm-plus offered by top-end jets from Bombardier, Dassault, and Gulfstream. However, Saade maintains this is rarely a deal-breaker as he claims more than 99% of all large-cabin flights that took off from US airports last year were within the ACJ TwoTwenty’s 5,650nm limit.
“When most people purchase a business jet, comfort is the top criteria, followed by range. So, a huge proportion of users of these [competitor] aircraft are not using the range,” he says.
“For those looking purely for range, I will admit we are not the solution. But for a customer flying mostly within North America with perhaps one 7,000nm mission a year, this could be done with a single technical stop.”
Sales Push
So, almost exactly four years after its launch, why has Airbus not notched up more than nine ACJ TwoTwenty sales? “Penetrating an established market takes time,” admits Saade. “People are still watching.”
He says that customers for seven of the nine ACJ TwoTwentys ordered have previously owned traditional large-cabin business jets, putting paid to the claim that by launching the aircraft, Airbus could end up cannibalizing sales of its larger A320-based ACJs.
There are two reasons for that, he maintains. Firstly, most legacy ACJs have been operated as head-of-state or government aircraft – a segment he says the ACJ TwoTwenty is not really competing in. Secondly, “successful people always want to upgrade” and the ACJ TwoTwenty is a “step up” from other large-cabin types.
The deal with Comlux to carry out the completion for the first 17 aircraft is a first for Airbus, which has traditionally delivered its ACJs ‘green’ to the customer, who has in turn selected a completion house to install a customized interior.
Zurich-headquartered Comlux, which carries out the completions at its facility in Indianapolis, offers a standard interior that can be adapted to the customer’s taste or requirements. “We are able to tailor it quite a bit,” says White.
The cabins on the third, fourth, fifth, and sixth aircraft are similar to that on the first – delivered by Comlux to hotel and resorts group Five in May 2023. However, the second ACJ TwoTwenty was “fairly bespoke” and numbers seven and eight will also be “quite different from the catalogue”, he says.
The three aircraft delivered so far are operated by Comlux on management contracts with the Five-owned example available for charter. The fourth example, however, will not be operated by the Swiss company.
Completion Time
Comlux has been working hard to reduce the completion time on each aircraft from the current 10 months to eight – the initial Five ACJ TwoTwenty took 14 months as the cabin had to be approved by the European Union Aviation Safety Agency.
“The one in the hangar now will be the first we can do at eight months,” says White. “It’s been a learning curve to build a bit of industrialization and serialize the production. We are looking to be even faster, to really bring that completion window down.”
Saade says the ACJ business as a whole had a “record year” in 2024 with 17 orders for purpose-built corporate jets, while 2025 is shaping up to be “very strong too”. The Middle East and Southeast Asia remain its biggest markets.
Airbus’s overall ACJ deliveries have been in single figures in all but one year since the turn of the decade, according to General Aviation Manufacturers Association data: in 2021, it shipped 11 aircraft. In the first half of 2025, it delivered two aircraft, both in the second quarter: an ACJ330 and an ACJ TwoTwenty.
While in the USA, Airbus has struggled to match rival Boeing’s success with its BBJ range – only around 10 of some 220 ACJs are in service there – Saade is convinced that number will double in the next three years.
Airbus’s core government/head of state segment holds out much hope with three-quarters of the 150 or so single-aisle ACJs in operation over 15 years old. “We have a large part of the market where aircraft are coming to the age where replacement is important,” he says.
Saade admits that corporate jets will never be more than a “niche” for Airbus as the airframer focuses on ramping up its production of airliners to more than 70 a month. “We would like a small slice,” he says. “My ambition is to reach 10 to 20 aircraft deliveries a year – that’s double what we do today.”
