Airbus faces another setback with popular plane
Airbus has been hit with another setback just days after it asked its clients, including Jetstar, to make an emergency software update.
Aircraft maker Airbus is facing a delivery setback of its flagship model, A320, following an emergency software upgrade warning for the popular aircraft to airlines.
The European manufacturing juggernaut announced on Wednesday it had lowered its 2025 target for A320 deliveries because of fuselage panel quality issues.
It said it now expects full-year 2025 commercial aircraft deliveries to total 790, down from an initial target of 820, a drop of 3.7 per cent.
It did not say whether 2026 deliveries would also be affected by the problem which it said stemmed from “a recent supplier quality issue on fuselage panels impacting its A320 Family delivery flow”.
On Tuesday, Airbus had warned that up to 628 of its popular A320 planes worldwide may need to be inspected for the metal plate “quality issue” – a separate issue to the software upgrade that saw some 6000 aircraft around the world, including Jetstar planes, unable to fly.
In a message to AFP, the European aircraft manufacturer said the figure represented the “total number of potentially impacted aircraft” but “it doesn’t mean all these aircraft are necessarily impacted”.
It added that the number of planes earmarked for checks was “reducing day by day as inspections progress to identify those needing a specific action to be taken”.
On Monday, Airbus said it had detected the issue but asserted the problem was “contained” and affected only “a limited number of A320 metal panels”.
The fuselage is the primary structure of an aircraft, forming the outer shell. Its panels are designed to be both lightweight and strong.
The issue did not affect Airbus’s previous results guidance, the company said in Wednesday’s statement. Adjusted EBIT – a measure of operating performance – is still expected to come in at around 7 billion euros ($A12 billion), it said.
The statement comes only days after the plane manufacturer instructed its clients including Jetstar, to take “immediate precautionary action” to replace software.
The announcement raised concerns that hundreds of planes would need to be grounded for long periods.
But in the end, several leading airlines said there had been minimal or no cancellations as a result.
For Jetstar, however, it saw 90 flights cancelled on Saturday, November 29, as engineers raced to install a software patch.
The following morning, on Sunday, the required Airbus software update had been applied to all 34 affected Jetstar aircraft with operations officially back to normal.
“Analysis of a recent event involving an A320 Family aircraft has revealed that intense solar radiation may corrupt data critical to the functioning of flight controls,” the aircraft manufacturer said in a statement on Saturday.
Airbus shares dropped sharply following the announcement, at one point on Monday slumping by more than 10 per cent.
It saw a rebound in early Wednesday business, rising around 1.5 per cent on the Paris bourse.
