Airbus SE is urging Chinese airlines to place orders for its biggest planes because huge purchases by other carriers and supply-chain disruptions are extending wait times in the post-Covid travel boom.
“Slot availability is evolving very quickly, and we have tried to accelerate this discussion with our Chinese customers,” Airbus China Chief Executive Officer George Xu said in an interview at the company’s manufacturing line in Tianjin.
Chinese airlines splashed out on 332 single-aisle Airbus jets last year, worth about $42 billion at list prices, but orders for widebody aircraft have fallen off — the backlog for these bigger twin-aisle planes is less than two dozen, Cirium says. Boeing Co.’s China orders largely evaporated in recent years in the wake of the 737 Max crashes and amid political tension between China and the US.
Airbus has only a handful of delivery slots left for its A320neo family of narrowbodies before 2030, while Boeing’s 737 Max is effectively sold out into 2028.
Airbus Chief Commercial Officer Christian Scherer warned last month that wait times for twin-aisle jets are expanding as well. The European aircraft manufacturer has forecast that Chinese airlines will need 9,440 new planes between 2023 and 2042, about 15% of them widebodies.
“Asia is half of the global demand for the next 20 years,” Xu told Bloomberg Television. “China is around half of the demand of Asia.”
Wait Times
It takes several years for a purchase to materialize into actual deliveries. A record order for 500 Airbus narrowbodies at the Paris Air Show last month will join the fleet of IndiGo, India’s biggest airline, from 2030 to 2035, for example — and then only if production goes as scheduled.
Airbus aims to deliver 720 aircraft this year as it works to increase output — a target it missed in 2022. As of May, the company had fulfilled about a third of its delivery goal, suggesting another dash to meet the annual deadline.
In China, travel demand is returning now that the country has emerged from Covid lockdowns and restrictions on movement. Domestic air travel rebounded more strongly, but international services are also coming back.
About 50 Chinese airline operate some 3,190 single-aisle and 449 twin-aisle aircraft. The so-called Big Three — Air China Ltd., China Southern Airlines Co. and China Eastern Airlines Corp. — account for two thirds of the overall fleet and have planes with an average age of about 8 years.
Supply Lines
Airbus makes its largest jets at its Toulouse, France, headquarters campus. Single-aisle planes are also built in Hamburg, Germany, Mobile, Alabama, at a plant near Montreal, and in Tianjin, which is about 100 kilometers (62 miles) southeast of Beijing. Tianjin is also a completion facility for larger A330 and A350 models, carrying out work such as installing interiors.
The manufacturer will build a second A320 final-assembly line in Tianjin, doubling production capacity there to 12 a month. The new line, due to start operating in 2025, is integral to Airbus’s ambition to produce as many as 75 of the jets a month globally by 2026.
Airbus will also hire 400 more workers in Tianjin to support the new line, bringing total staff there to 1,400, Xu said.
“Taking into consideration that the earliest slots for A320 are in 2029, maybe A220 could be also an excellent alternative solution for some of those Chinese airlines if they want to place orders for earlier slots,” Xu said, referring to the company’s smaller single-aisle jet.
--With assistance from Ocean Hou.