Airbus: New business up in May

Airbus new business in May was paced by 16 bookings for widebody A350 XWB and A330 jetliners, with orders logged as well for nine single-aisle A320 Family aircraft. A total of 51 deliveries were made during the month from Airbus’ A320, A330 and A350 XWB product lines.

Leading the sales activity was a transaction for 15 A350-900s from an undisclosed customer. Separately, one A330-200 was ordered for conversion into the Multi-Role Tanker/Transport (MRTT) version by Airbus for a military customer.

Deliveries in May involved 41 A320 Family jetliners (including 22 in the NEO configuration), along with seven A350-900s and three A330-200s/A330-300s. Based on the month’s deliveries, five carriers became new operators of A320neo/A321neo aircraft (Iberia, Jazeera Airways, Loong Air, Philippine Airlines and Royal Brunei Airlines), while OpenSkies joined the list of A330 operators.

With May’s orders and deliveries activity taken into account, net orders logged by Airbus during the first five months of 2018 totalled 111 jetliners. As of 31 May, Airbus’ overall backlog of jetliners remaining to be delivered stood at 7,153 aircraft, representing approximately nine years of production at current rates.

Airbus SE is a European multinational corporation that designs, manufactures and sells civil and military aeronautical products worldwide. In addition to its primary civil airplane business, the company has two divisions for other products and services: Defense and Space and Helicopters, the latter being the largest in its industry in terms of revenues and turbine helicopter deliveries.

The company’s main civil airplane business is based in Blagnac, France, a suburb of Toulouse, with production and manufacturing facilities mainly in France, Germany, Spain, China, United Kingdom and the United States. Final assembly production is based at Toulouse, France; Hamburg, Germany; Seville, Spain; Tianjin, China, and Mobile, United States. The company produces and markets the first commercially viable digital fly-by-wire airliner, the Airbus A320, and the world’s largest passenger airliner, the A380. The 10,000th aircraft, an A350, was delivered to Singapore Airlines on 14 October 2016 ; the global Airbus fleet having performed more than 110 million flights over 215 billion kilometers, carrying 12 billion passengers.