2023-11-28 19:35:54
Demand for aircraft is booming, and Airbus can hardly keep up with the orders. Customers have to wait for long years. At the moment there are more than 8,000 orders in the order book across all product lines, reported André Walter, head of civil aircraft production in Germany, to journalists in Hamburg. The largest order of all time came in June from the Indian airline Indigo, which placed a binding order for 500 aircraft from the A320 family.
The order backlog has increased by more than 800 aircraft since the beginning of the year alone – more than Airbus’ current annual capacity. 720 deliveries are planned this year. Walter said he was confident that this could be achieved: “We now have all the parts on board for what we want to deliver this year.”
This is by no means a given. Last year, Airbus actually planned 700 deliveries, but only delivered 661 aircraft because there were significant problems in the supply chain. These disruptions have not all been eliminated: “We are not relaxed,” admitted Walter. Roughly half of the deliveries occur in Hamburg. The entire A320 production is controlled from here, by far Airbus’ most important product group.
The big challenge still lies ahead for Airbus. If you add up the production plans for the different aircraft models, you’ll get more than 100 aircraft per month by 2026. By then, production capacity would have to be roughly doubled compared to the status quo – at Airbus as well as at the suppliers. To ensure that this works smoothly, Airbus actively approaches the companies and discusses with them how they can increase their capacities. At the same time, additional purchasing opportunities are being sought because Airbus wants to reduce its dependence on individual suppliers anyway. This search is time-consuming because products for aviation have to be specifically certified.
Record number of young talent
Airbus has significantly increased its staff for the ramp-up. This year, 1,300 employees were hired at the Hamburg location alone, and a further 450 at the other northern German locations. Most of them are additional jobs, says Walter: The fluctuation is very low. The increase in personnel will continue next year. The number of newly hired trainees and dual students will be expanded from 480 to up to 600 in order to secure the need for skilled workers in the future. Airbus currently employs almost 25,000 people in Germany, including around 2,100 temporary workers.
Timo Kotowski and Niklas Záboji Published/Updated: Jochen Remmert Published/Updated: Recommendations: 7 Sascha Zoske Published/Updated: , Recommendations: 4
During the corona pandemic, Airbus laid off 2,400 temporary workers. Was that a wrong decision given the large order book today? The Airbus Germany boss said he had sleepless nights because of it, looking back on the balancing act of that time. They had to make this decision, but they still made sure to keep production running, also to protect suppliers – even though customers sometimes wanted to delay delivery of the aircraft they had ordered for several years. Overall, Airbus spent a (self-financed) double-digit billion amount to deal with the Corona crisis.
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