The Hamburg final assembly line of the Airbus Industrie A321 and A319 is to raise production from six aircraft a month to 11 by the end of this year.

It will mean that together with the A320 line in Toulouse, Airbus will achieve a record 18 single-aisle aircraft a month.

"We have firmly established ourselves as the second final assembly centre within the Airbus consortium after Toulouse," says Gustav Humbert, chairman of Daimler-Benz Aerospace Airbus who is at the show today. "To meet future requirements, we have invested considerable amounts in the extension of the final assembly hangar, the expansion of the plant premises and in the streamlining of work processes."

The Hamburg team believes that it will have no problem meeting the new production targets, and won't find itself in the situation that Boeing did at the end of last year when it was unable, for a time, to meet its own production targets.

With its integrated final assembly approach, the Hamburg plant handles final assembly and interior furnishing simultaneously instead of sequentially as before. The result, says the company, is that production time is cut by as much as 30%.

Major production: the Airbus final assembly line at Hamburg is due to have its building rate almost doubled.

Source: Flight Daily News