Dec 3 (Reuters) – Airbus lowered its commercial aircraft delivery target to around 790 aircraft for 2025 on Wednesday due to a supplier quality issue impacting fuselage panels on its A320 family of jets.
The world’s largest planemaker had previously expected to deliver around 820 commercial aircraft this year. The popular A320 overtook the Boeing 737 in October as the most-delivered model in history.
Airbus engineers have found defects on a wider set of A320 fuselage panels as they prepare to inspect hundreds of jets, a presentation to airlines seen by Reuters showed. Around 40% of the affected jets are still in assembly lines.
The affected parts have the wrong thickness following a process of stretching and milling carried out by Seville-based Sofitec Aero, the presentation showed.
Reuters first reported the industrial quality problem on Monday, on the heels of an emergency recall of thousands of A320s for a software change over the weekend.
Airbus CEO Guillaume Faury said on Tuesday that the fuselage panel problem had also hit deliveries in November. The company is due to publish November data on Friday, but industry sources told Reuters that it delivered 72 aircraft that month, lower than expected.
Airbus’ financial goals for the year remain unchanged, it said in Wednesday’s statement.
(Reporting by Dimitri Rhodes in Gdansk, editing by Milla Nissi-Prussak)
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