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Airbus, the world’s biggest aeroplane maker, came within a whisker of its annual delivery target for 2024 following an end-of-year sprint to get more aircraft to customers despite persistent supply chain disruptions.
The European aerospace and defence group said it delivered 766 planes to airlines and lessors, more than the 735 it delivered in 2023, but just shy of its stated ambition to hand over “around 770” commercial aircraft.
The company is widely expected to have retained its crown as the world’s biggest plane maker by deliveries for the sixth year in a row ahead of troubled competitor Boeing.
Its US rival is expected to issue its numbers next week but has suffered a turbulent 12 months with issues with its 737 Max compounded by the blowout of a section of one of its aircraft, regulatory scrutiny, labour strikes and changes in top management.
Airbus’s A321neo jet accounted for 60 per cent of its narrow-body deliveries last year, underlining the model’s status as the world’s best-selling aircraft.
The group had been under pressure to step up shipments in the last two months of 2024 after struggling to raise output during the year in the face of supply chain challenges and engine delays. The company on Thursday said it delivered 123 aircraft in December alone, up from the 112 jets it handed over in the same month in 2023.
Airbus unsettled investors in June after issuing a profit warning and cutting back its original end-of-year delivery target from roughly 800 to about 770. It also pushed back its target of producing 75 aircraft a month of its best-selling A320 family of jets from 2026 to 2027.
The revisions sent Airbus shares tumbling more than 10 per cent at the time. The stock is up nearly 10 per cent over the past 12 months and closed at €156 on Thursday.
Christian Scherer, chief executive of commercial aircraft at Airbus, said that given the “complex and fast-changing environment” the company rated 2024 a “good year”, noting that “as far as I am concerned we reached [the year-end target]”.
Scherer said he was confident that Airbus’s goal of producing 75 jets a month in 2027 was still “realistic” while adding that there was still more work to be done to fix supply chains.
Despite the better than expected performance towards the end of 2024, Philip Buller, analyst at Berenberg, cautioned that it could lead to a slower start to 2025.
“The now annual ‘December miracle’ in deliveries, while impressive, is likely to lead to a very slow start to 2025 and the increasing Q4 weighting is becoming progressively harder to get comfortable with,” Buller wrote in a note to clients.
Airbus recorded 826 net orders in 2024, taking its backlog to 8,658 jets. Demand for long-haul widebody aircraft had continued to show momentum, it said, with 142 orders for A350s.
The European group took the delivery title from Boeing in 2019 following a second crash involving its 737 Max, which led to the global grounding of the model and a subsequent halt in its production. The US manufacturer had delivered just 318 aircraft to the end of November.
