Airbus is one of the greatest success stories of European industry and technology of the last half century, a model of cooperation between states and thus an antidote to the pessimism and recurring sense of decline of the Old Continent . The figures for the aeronautical manufacturer in 2023 are spectacular, and confirm its global leadership and its growing advantage over Boeing, the great competitor of the United States.
The Toulouse-based consortium’s push saw a pre-Christmas acceleration and, in just one week, from December 12 to 19, saw its order book expand to an additional 537 commercial aircraft. In the year as a whole, the contracts signed reached 1,938 aircraft, well above the record of 2013, with 1,503 purchase orders.
The dream of any industry with this volume of turnover (58,900 million euros in 2022, with a profit of 4,247 million), mass of employees and technological and logistical complexity is to have the activity guaranteed for a long time to be able to plan and optimize processes. In the case of Airbus, cumulative orders reach almost 9,000 aircraft. This ensures employment in the factories for twelve years. And for the sixth year, it is the world leader in commercial aeronautics.
Among the customers who have opted for Airbus again at the last minute is Turkish Airlines, which has ordered 220 aircraft, of which 150 of the A321 model, for medium distances, and 70 of the A350, ideal for long journeys. To these firm orders is added the option to acquire 135 extra planes if the Turkish company needs them. The contract is for around 48,000 million euros. The other acquisitions were carried out by the British low-cost company easyJet, with 157 A320neo ordered for its fleet, the German Lufthansa (40 units of the small A220 jet) and the Irish Avolon, committed to getting 100 A321neo.
After the strong contraction and doubts caused by the covid, the aeronautical market lives with formidable growth prospects for the next few years, a reality that collides with the need to fight the climate emergency, despite the increasing efforts of the manufacturers to develop very sustainable aircraft. Boeing estimates that the total number of commercial aircraft in service in the world will double by the year 2044, from the current 24,500 to 48,500 in two decades.
Unlike Airbus, Boeing is having a hard time getting out of the crisis caused by the pandemic, a situation that exacerbated the structural problems – very serious – suffered by the Seattle manufacturer, punished by delays in the release of models and very serious design errors that led to accidents. According to the latest calculations, Boeing’s order book is 35% lower than that of its competitor.
Airbus has been able to adapt its product range much better to demand, especially the models for medium-distance flights that consume and pollute less. Boeing has suffered very painful setbacks in the fourth generation of one of its historically most successful models, the 737. Two accidents, in October 2018 and March 2019, were a terrible blow. The breakdown suffered by this device – in its Max 9 version – this very weekend on the Alaska Airlines company, with the loss of part of the fuselage, has once again ignited doubts.
The main challenge for Airbus is to increase its industrial capacity, its own and that of subcontracted companies, to be able to meet the expectations of customers and deliver the planes without a major delay. The risk of being overwhelmed by the success of their products is real. In fact, the delivery period is already excessive, between eight and ten years. To try to correct the problem, the network of final assembly factories has been strengthened, including the one in Toulouse de Llenguadoc, to produce the most popular model, the A321neo. The manufacture of these aircraft will reach its full capacity in a few years with the assembly facilities in Hamburg (Germany), Mobile (United States) and Tianjin (China).
