Airbus increases its production rate

The European aircraft manufacturer is announcing good figures for the start of the year, orders are picking up again.  

Assembly line of the A350 at the Airbus plant in Toulouse (Haute-Garonne). (PASCALE DANYEL RF)

The  aeronautical sector has been one of the most affected during the Covid-19 crisis for the past  two years, and the war that Russia is currently waging on European soil raises fears for the worst every day. One tension follows another, but Airbus is clearly showing signs of resistance. 49 planes were delivered last month (80 since the beginning of the year) and there are already 113 new promises to purchase, 55 firm orders posted at the end of February.

Deliveries are a valuable indicator of profitability. In aeronautics, customers pay a large part of the bill when the devices are made available. Orders at the start of the year relate to 50 medium-haul A330s and 53 A320s. They emanate in particular from Gulf and Asian companies such as Kuwait Airways and Singapore Airlines. Two days before the start of the Russian offensive on Ukraine, Airbus even delivered an A350 jumbo jet to the Russian company Aeroflot.

The war poses serious threats to the group's activity

With the triggering of trade sanctions imposed by Europe on Russia, Airbus has suspended its activities with Moscow. But the group's global ambitions are intact: Airbus plans to hire at least 6,000 people worldwide this year.

This is a double challenge facing all industrial sectors: on the one hand, ensuring the resumption of activity and, on the other, working on how best to support this recovery with the imperatives of energetic transition. A quarter of recruitments planned at Airbus call for new knowledge related to decarbonisation, digital transformation and cybertechnology. This evolution of the world, in substance, even Vladimir Putin cannot question it.