Airbus cuts delivery target after troubles with most popular jet

PARIS – Airbus lowered its aircraft delivery target for the year by 3.7 per cent after problems with its top-selling A320 model.

The European manufacturer expects to hand 790 jets to customers in 2025, it said in a filing on Dec 3, versus its previous target of 820.

Airbus kept its financial targets unchanged.

This week, it revealed

a quality issue with some fuselage panels

for the A320 family aircraft, saying 628 jets contain parts that are either too thick or too thin.

Of those, 168 planes are in service with carriers, with the rest in various stages of production, the manufacturer told customers in a presentation.

Airbus is inspecting all affected aircraft, though it told buyers that a “significant portion” of the panels was expected to conform to specifications.

The panels were provided by Sofitec Aero, which is based in Seville, Spain.

Just a few days earlier, the France-based plane maker

issued its largest recall to date

after an incident involving the same best-selling model uncovered possible corruption of flight controls because of cosmic radiation.

The vast majority of the about 6,000 A320-family aircraft impacted by the software glitch received the necessary fix within several days. Others had to wait for an upgrade.

The one-two punch spooked investors and triggered the plane maker’s worst trading day since April.

Airbus,

along with rival Boeing

, was already experiencing shortages in supply chains for engines, frames and cabin interiors that were hindering deliveries.

“The pressures of quarterly results, sometimes the pressures of competition, probably the quality drops a little bit,” founder of AirAsia Tony Fernandes said in a Dec 2 interview with Bloomberg Television. “It’s a good warning for everybody.”

His airline is one of Airbus’ largest customers for single-aisle jets.

The manufacturer faced issues with engines on its newer A320neo jets, powered by RTX’s Pratt & Whitney, that forced hundreds of planes to be taken out of service temporarily for maintenance. BLOOMBERG