Airbus fell short of meeting its 2022 delivery target by 39 airplanes, thanks to a supply chain environment company CEO Guillaume Faury said remains at a “very low point” during a Tuesday media call. The delivery tally of 661 airplanes represented just an 8 percent increase over the company’s total in 2021, when the company largely overcame Covid-related market “complexities” to exceed its delivery target of 600 aircraft by 11 units.
“2022 was a year characterized by a complex environment,” explained Faury. “While air travelers returned in large numbers during the summer, the supply chain remains [constrained by] the impact of covid, the war in Ukraine, energy supply issues, inflation, and, generally speaking, constrained global markets.” Faury added that although the situation “stabilized” in December, this year might bring more unexpected reasons for disruption.
“So as the old problems get better, we might be hit by the consequences of the energy crisis in Europe or the very challenging and chaotic situation in China,” he added. Nevertheless, Airbus continues to target a monthly production rate for its narrowbody models of 65 airplanes in 2024 and 75 “by the middle of the decade,” reported Faury.
Notwithstanding the supply chain challenges, Airbus COO Christian Scherer portrayed the market environment last year as robust, as the company collected gross orders for 1,078 airplanes and registered a net order count of 820. He also characterized cancellations as “in line with previous years” and “largely anticipated.”
“2022 did clearly demonstrate that despite geographical and geopolitical turbulence, the market is back,” said Scherer. “And airlines are not only willing but eager to reconnect with their previous growth trajectories.”
While, as usual, Airbus’s narrowbody models accounted for the bulk of the orders during the year, Scherer expressed optimism about the company’s widebody models despite a negative-65 net order count for the A330 line due largely to the March cancellation of deal with Air Asia X involving 63 A330neos. “I want to point out that there were 13 passenger widebody deals globally for all players in 2022, and out of those Airbus won eight of them,” stressed Scherer.
“[The cancellations] are what they were largely, I will say, totally anticipated…It’s true the volumes are not huge but I invite you to go into the detail and composition of the various orders, you will see that in terms of numbers of campaigns, of competitive campaigns in which the A products were pegged against the B products, Airbus prevailed in the vast majority of them.”
Meanwhile, Airbus saw its narrowbodies draw orders for more than 1,000 examples even in a capacity-constrained environment, suggesting, said Scherer, that customers remain willing to wait for several years for what he called the better product. “We could be selling a lot more airplanes in that space if we had more,” he acknowledged. That's true.”
Of course, Boeing faced many of the same supply chain constraints its European counterpart encountered last year, as a disruption in CFM Leap engine castings for the 737 Max and the delivery halt until August of the 787 due to production faults limited its total deliveries to 480 airplanes. From a marketing perspective though, Boeing also enjoyed a strong year, collecting net orders for 561 Max jets and 213 widebodies.
“We worked hard in 2022 to stabilize 737 production, resume 787 deliveries, launch the 777-8 Freighter and, most importantly, meet our customer commitments,” Boeing Commercial Airplanes CEO Stan Deal said in a written statement. "As the airline industry expands its recovery, we are seeing strong demand across our product family, particularly the highly efficient 737 Max and the 787 Dreamliner. We will stay focused on driving stability within our operations and the supply chain as we work to deliver for our customers in 2023 and beyond.”