Airbus delivered 800 commercial aircraft to 93 customers in 2018, meeting its full year delivery guidance and reporting a new company record with deliveries 11% higher than the previous record of 718 units in 2017.
Commercial aircraft deliveries in 2018 were comprised of 20 A220s since it became part of the Airbus family in July 2018, 626 A320 Family (compared to 558 in 2017) of which 386 were A320neo family (compared to 181 neo variations in 2017).
Deliveries also included 49 A330s (vs 67 in 2017), including the first three A330neo in 2018, 93 A350 XWB (vs 78 in 2017) and 12 A380s (vs 15 in 2017).
In sales Airbus achieved 747 net orders during 2018, compared with 1,109 net orders in 2017. At the end of 2018, Airbus says the backlog of Airbus commercial aircraft reached a new “industry record”, standing at 7,577 aircraft, including 480 A220s, compared with 7,265 at the end of 2017.
“Despite significant operational challenges, Airbus continued its production ramp-up and delivered a record number of aircraft in 2018,” said Guillaume Faury, president Airbus Commercial Aircraft. “I am equally pleased about the healthy order intake as it shows the underlying strength of the commercial aircraft market and the trust our customers are placing in us. My gratitude goes out to all of them for their ongoing support.”
Faury added that the digitalisation of the business will be a key priority going forwards as Airbus looks to further increase industrial efficiency.
Airbus said over the last 16 years it has “steadily increased its production year-by-year” with final assembly lines in Hamburg, Toulouse, Tianjin, and Mobile complemented by the addition of the A220 line in Mirabel, Canada, during 2018. Airbus explained that a notable contribution to Airbus’ delivery increase in 2018 came from the final assembly lines in the US and China.
Overall, Airbus said the A320 programme is on track to achieve rate 60 per month for the A320 Family by mid-2019.
