PARIS—Reaching its airliner production goals is becoming “a bit more difficult every day,” Airbus CEO Guillaume Faury says on the eve of the 2025 Paris Air Show. Yet the manufacturer's plans for ramping up output “remain the same.”
Airbus delivered 243 aircraft in the first five months of the year. It has targeted around 820 airliner deliveries for 2025.
Narrowbody deliveries are currently being held back by a shortage of CFM International Leap-1A engines as the powerplant's manufacturer temporarily prioritizes supporting the in-service fleet.
Other constraints are also continuing, but Airbus Commercial Aircraft CEO Christian Scherer points to improvements in the supply chain. The number of missing or late parts in Airbus’ final assembly lines “is in meaningful decline” and “98% of suppliers managed to feed our needs.”
However, engines, cabin components—such as toilets for the Airbus A350—continue to hold back significantly higher output. Yet Scherer says the situation is “significantly better” than even only a few months ago.
Airbus is expected to announce several large orders at Paris Air Show which kicks off on June 16.
Airbus has “no intention” to reduce its industrial presence anywhere, even as tariffs continue to disrupt its long-established mechanisms and parts flows, Scherer says.
“It is premature to throw in the towel,” Scherer says. “We see the dynamics in international talks and hope we are not moving in that direction,” he adds, referring to the potential permanent tariffing of aerospace goods. “[Tariffs] are not good for the global [aerospace] community, nor for the U.S.”
Scherer is hopeful that the “chorus of aerospace companies” which has developed a “very harmonized theme” will eventually be heard. But for the time being, everyone in the industry “takes their share of pain,” he says, pointing to manufacturers, suppliers and airlines.
Airbus currently has to pay the 10% baseline tariffs for components imported to its U.S. final assembly lines in Mobile, Alabama. U.S. airlines importing aircraft from other U.S. sites have to pay the levies, too, unless they find workarounds; Delta Air Lines has begun taking delivery of A350s in Japan.
Faury said in a June 10 Aviation Week interview that “I am a bit worried about what would happen if the tariffs were raised significantly above 10%.” But other players—among them Safran CEO Olivier Andriès , Michelin CEO Florent Menegaux and Embraer Commercial Aviation CEO Arjen Meijer—made clear at the Paris Air Forum that even the 10% level is too heavy a burden.
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