Airbus deliveries slump masks record order book as Faury battles engine shortages

Airbus first-quarter aircraft deliveries fell 16 per cent, the European planemaker reported on Tuesday, as a persistent shortage of Pratt & Whitney geared turbofan engines and a fuselage panel quality issue continued to choke its production system, even as the order book swelled to a record 9,037 commercial jets.

The Toulouse-based group handed over 114 aircraft in the three months to March, down from 136 a year earlier, dragging revenues down 7 per cent to €12.7bn and compressing adjusted operating profit to €300m from €624m. Chief executive Guillaume Faury described the period as a "desynchronization between production and delivery," admitting the shortfall was the worst he could remember at the company.

Airbus nonetheless reaffirmed full-year guidance of around 870 commercial aircraft deliveries and €4.5bn of free cash flow before customer financing, leaving more than three-quarters of its annual target to be cleared in the remaining nine months. Investors looked through the headline miss, lifting the shares 1.1 per cent to €165.17 in Paris.

The order pipeline tells a different story. Net orders almost doubled year on year to 398 jets, with gross intake of 408 lifting the backlog to roughly 12 years of current production. Airbus Defence and Space booked €5bn of orders, nearly twice the prior-year tally, with revenues up 7 per cent to €2.8bn on stronger military aircraft volumes.

Engine supply remains the binding constraint. Faury said Pratt & Whitney would be "the key pacer" for the A320 ramp through 2027, with rival CFM unable to absorb the full shortfall. An "administrative delay" also held back nearly 20 deliveries to Chinese carriers in the quarter.

The result casts Airbus's industrial bottlenecks in starker relief alongside Boeing, which last week reported a narrower first-quarter loss as US deliveries climbed. For European airlines awaiting fleet renewal, the message is unchanged: capacity will remain tight well into 2027.