Airbus Sets Record with High Orders & Deliveries in 2023

UPDATE - Airbus has ended 2023 with a record-high 2.094 net orders and delivered 735 commercial aircraft, the airframer reported on Thursday evening. This makes 2023 a landmark year, said President and CEO Guillaume Faury. With a sense of understatement, the fresh CEO of Commercial Aircraft, Christian Scherer, said: “Pretty exceptional.” Airbus booked 2.319 gross orders through December, of which 807 alone in December. These include some triple-digit orders. easyJet ordered 52 A320neo and 101 A321neo aircraft or 153 in total. Including 4 A320neo's ordered in April, that makes the 157 that was announced in the December 19 press release, says Airbus. Turkish Airlines ordered 150 A321neo’s, 50 A350-900s, 15 A350-1000s, and 5 A350F freighters. Lessor Avolon ordered 100 A321neo’s. Another sizeable order came from an undisclosed customer (Riyadh Air?), which was booked on December 21 for 12 A320neo and 132 A321neo aircraft. Other December orders are: Air France-KLM for 33 A350-900s and 11 -1000s (including 6 ordered in July makes 50), Lufthansa for 40 A220-300s, Delta Air Lines for 14 A220-300s, EVA Air for 15 A321neo’s and 18 A350-1000s, Qantas for 12 A350-1000s, Korean Air for 20 A321neo’s, and Cathay Pacific for 6 A350Fs. There were also orders from two undisclosed customers for 10 A220-300s and 5 A321neo’s respectively. There was also an order for one ACJ TwoTwenty and 5 A330 tankers. It is easy to forget that these December sales followed on what already has been a great year for Airbus. In June, IndiGo gave the airframer its single-biggest order for 500 A320neo family aircraft. Air India bought 250 A320neo family and A350s, but there were also orders from Viva Aerobus for 90 A321neo’s, Wizz Air for 75 A321neo’s, United for 60 A321neo’s, lessor SMBC for 60 A320neo family, Cathay Pacific for 32 A320neo family, flynas for 30 A320neo’s, airBaltic for 30 A220-300s, Volaris for 25 A321neo’s, Icelandair for 13 A321XLRs, Ethiopian for 11 A350-900s, and EgyptAir for 11 A350-900s. Iran Air orders deleted December also saw 108 cancelations. They include 6 A320ceo's, 32 A320neo’s, 8 A330-200s, 28 A330-900s, 16 A350-1000s, and even 7 A321ceo’s for Iran Air that have been in the books for a long time but are undeliverable as sanctions on Iran continue. Cancelations also include 8 A330-300s for China Aerospace Leasing (CASC). This brings the total cancelations for the year to 225 aircraft. With 2.094 net orders, nothing compares to 2023 and makes this by far the best-ever year in the history of the European airframer. By comparison: Airbus reported 831 net orders in 2018, 768 in 2019, 268 in 2020, 507 in 2021, and 820 in 2022. Boeing reported net orders for 2023 of 1.576 aircraft, including cancelations and accounting adjustments. Airbus’ backlog stands at 8.598 aircraft. Deliveries Airbus delivered 735 aircraft to 87 customers, meeting the upper side of its target of around 720 deliveries set out at the start of the year. The target was met despite a still tense supply chain, although not as troublesome as in 2022 and early 2023. Without lower deliveries by Pratt & Whitney of the Geared Turbofan engines that were agreed on in 2022, deliveries could have been even higher. But it is not just engines. It can be parts here and there that are coming late and disrupt the final assembly of an aircraft, which consists of some three million parts, as Faury wanted to point out. Deliveries include 571 A320neo family, of which 317 were A321neo’s, 247 A320neo’s, and 7 A319neo’s/ACJ319s. “With 317 A321 deliveries, we not only reached an all-time A321 delivery record in absolute terms but also in delivery share. The aircraft now represents 56 percent of our A320 deliveries and is growing,” said Faury. A220 deliveries also reached a new record, with 65 -300s, two -100s, and a single ACJ TwoTwenty. There were 32 A330 deliveries, including three -200 tanker aircraft and 29 A330-900s. No -800s were delivered during the year, so the A330neo remains a slow seller although total deliveries have now reached 121. Last year, A350 deliveries totaled 64, of which 52 were -900s and 12 -1000s. The new A321neo Final Assembly Line in the former A380 complex in Toulouse delivered its first aircraft in December. (Airbus) Faury didn’t expand on the production rates and targets for 2024 but said it is unlikely that deliveries will exceed pre-pandemic levels already this year. Airbus delivered 863 aircraft in 2019, 800 in 2018, 566 in 2020, 611 in 2021, and 661 in 2022. Faury reiterated previously shared rates for 2026. The A320neo family will go to 75 per month on ten lines in France, Germany, the US, and China, although Scherer added that “it is a lot of work.” The A220 will reach 14 per month in 2026 in Mirabel and Mobile. The A350 will ramp up to 10 per month in 2026. The A330 is going to four per month this year. The Airbus Group CEO acknowledged that 2023 has been another backloaded year, with most deliveries in November and December. While this has put a lot of pressure on his people, Faury said: “As I was discussing the situation with the team in November and December, it has actually been a much smoother end of the year than what we experienced in the previous year. We achieved a lot of deliveries in December but with less pressure on the people, because more work was done before. We could feel during the year that we were on a trajectory to reach the target of 720 and were preparing well for the end of the year.” “This being said, we would prefer to be less backloaded but it is a bit of a scheme within the industry to have a lot of planes at the end of the year. With the ramp-up anyway, we are by nature having delivered more planes in the last part of the year than in the front. We will see that as long as we ramp up.” Demand will continue Reflecting on the past year, Guillaume Faury said: “2023 was a landmark year that allowed us to deliver on our commercial aircraft objectives.” Christian Scherer remarked: “What we achieved in 2023, despite the remaining complex and volatile environment, is pretty exceptional. Our teams have pulled in 2.319 gross orders, which is not just an Airbus but also an industry-all-time high. But we have to keep our feet on the ground, even if this represents a book-to-bill ratio significantly above three.” Scherer shared some key take-aways that marked the year. First, 2023 did see a full recovery of air travel from the pandemic. “Traffic is back, the world wants to be connected.” The order surge also confirms that airlines want to replace older-generation aircraft with newer, more fuel-efficient ones that have lower emissions. And good news for Airbus: aircraft pricing held up quite well, meaning airlines and lessors accepted escalations. But even with over 2.000 net orders for Airbus and some 1.600 for Boeing, the newer-generation aircraft still make up only 30 percent of the world’s fleet. So there is still the need for more replacements, a trend that Scherer thinks will continue this year despite Airbus being sold out for A320neo family aircraft until 2030 and A350s through 2028. The three versions of the A350 won a combined 288 net orders. This is an A350-1000 performing a demonstration during November's Dubai Airshow. (Richard Schuurman) With 288 A350 orders (including 15 freighters) and 7 A330-900s, Scherer said that the widebody market is following the recovery of the narrowbody market “quite forcefully. (…) I see no signs that there isn't sustained demand for widebodies going forward.” Long-haul demand is also bouncing back faster and stronger than what was anticipated during the pandemic when it was expected that the widebody market would not recover until 2024 at the earliest. While Airbus did well, Boeing outsold its competitor with 429 787s and 777X and 10 777Fs, although Scherer said that a closer look at the order decisions would indicate that Airbus has done better. Scherer confirmed that Airbus will offer an A320neo successor and a hydrogen airliner in the next decade. Faury made the first remarks about the A320neo family replacement in an interview in June, but he and other management have repeated since then that this plan is for real. Speaking about the A321XLR, Faury said that the aircraft is in the final stages of its flight testing and certification phase and should be delivered to its first customer in the second quarter.

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