He runs the largest aerospace company in Europe and is a world leader in its sector. It has 130,000 employees and invoices almost 60,000 million euros a year. Guillaume Faury heads Airbus, which is aiming for production changes, more jobs and keeping abreast of the trade dispute with the United States over tariffs and subsidies.
What is your biggest concern right now?
Supply Chain. We wanted to increase aircraft production by 20% in 2022 compared to 2021 and what we managed to increase was 8%, which is quite disappointing. It will take us two years to achieve what we wanted to achieve in 2022 and now we will accelerate for 2024 and 2025.
What was the problem?
The problem… is that it hasn’t just been a problem. On the one hand, there is the rate of production of engines, the lack of materials, of basic parts such as microchips and electronic components. On the other hand, we suffer from labor shortages in many Airbus supplier companies around the world that have not yet fully recovered. The supply chain is touched.
A major storm.
We have lived and are living through an energy crisis that has made everything more difficult and there are logistical problems, when our industry has to work like clockwork to meet commitments.
In any case, I see him happy with the recovery of commercial aviation.
You have to be: last year the number of orders for Airbus aircraft by airlines around the world exceeded a thousand units.
And these plans for the future also include environmental issues.
Yes, the airlines live in the real world and in addition to wanting to be more competitive, they want their planes to consume less and reduce their carbon footprint. Come on, we are all forced to do it.
And where are Airbus’ future plans in this field?
We are living through a transition from current fuels to hydrogen and as a transition fuel we have SAF, both synthetic and obtained from biomass. We will see many positive and surprising things in the field of decarbonization in the short and medium term, including in aircraft design.
The Airbus A380s that seemed like they would not fly again are being activated again and the demand is growing. Don’t you regret closing that assembly line?
I really like to see the A380 fly again. It’s a fantastic plane for the passenger experience. Stopping building them before covid was a very thoughtful decision and now we have some long-haul twin-engine products that replace it well.
His company’s most successful model is the A320 family. It flies all over the world and is the backbone of companies like Vueling and Iberia. At what rate are they produced?
It’s a success, right. In 2022 we have built fifty a month. Before the covid, the production of the A320 and A321 was practically two a day: 60. The goal for 2025 is 75 units per month to cover demand.
What happened to your dispute with Qatar Airways and the painting of your A350s?
We reached an agreement after two years of bitter conflict with a major client. After many discussions, signing peace has been a great break. We had very different points of view, although speaking a lot with Akbar al Baker (CEO of Qatar Airways) we have understood each other.
Negotiations of this level lead one to think that a position such as CEO of Airbus is equivalent to a foreign minister or prime minister representing his country, due to the weight of his company in the world sphere.
Well, I would say that my position is a mix: it has a commercial part, since we obviously sell aircraft, defense systems and aerospace. It is also strategic, because we design part of the future of the world and also geopolitics, since we have constant contact with governments around the world, both on regulatory issues and on military or space contracts.
What is it like to lead such a structure?
I like it and it motivates me every morning. As the head of a corporation of this size I would say that the key is to encourage things to improve and change. I also believe that it is easier to be the leader of something when there are challenges like those experienced since I arrived in 2019.
How is the conflict between Airbus and Boeing? I would almost say that between the EU and the US that on the tariff issue has been going on for almost two decades.
Fortunately we are in a period of peace in this regard. Both the EU and the US established a ceasefire on the issue of tariffs and subsidies. A five-year hiatus was agreed and now we will reach the second. What matters to us now is China, which accounts for 20% of our market and is developing its own projects.
And compared to Boeing, eternal rival, how are they in terms of market shares?
We continue to grow, both because of its difficulties in recent years and because of our own commercial policy. In the end, market share is determined by our ability to build and deliver aircraft, and we have requests for the next ten years.
Today you have orders for 7,255 aircraft and Boeing 5,408.
They are good numbers. They force us to improve our productivity and I believe that the success is due to the good range of products that we offer.
Let’s talk about Airbus in Spain and its weight in the corporation as a whole.
At the different plants we have 13,000 people and throughout 2023 we are going to hire a thousand more. We believe and grow in Spain. In Andalusia we are consolidating a center with a new name: Airbus Cádiz, in the Port of Santamaría. This integrates the activity of the Puerto Real plant and the total coupling will take about two years. It means improving assembly lines and integrating civil and defense activity into a single production plant.
In percentage, how much does each division represent in Airbus Spain?
Well, we would be talking about Defense and space representing 60%, commercial aviation 30 and helicopters 10.
In 2020, he met with President Pedro Sánchez to draw up a roadmap for the company in the country and now they meet again at the highest level.
With Mr. Sánchez we talked about the increase in the workload of Airbus Spain in the group and now we will talk about the stronger position of his country in the European Space Agency and the new Spanish Space Agency. In fact, on this trip to Madrid, in addition to celebrating the centenary of CASA, Construcciones Aeronáutica, which joined our group, I am here to see the new Step-2 space installation at our Getafe plant, specialized in manufacturing components for launchers and launch vehicles, alongside the King and the president.
