Published by Global Banking and Finance Review
Posted on December 2, 2025
By Tim Hepher
BRUSSELS, Dec 2 (Reuters) - Airbus is assessing the impact on year-end deliveries of a fuselage quality issue on some A320 jets after the newly discovered snag led to "weak" November handovers, CEO Guillaume Faury told Reuters as a key annual target hangs in the balance.
The problem has brought "another challenge" to already backloaded year-end deliveries, and Airbus plans to assess the situation for December deliveries "in the hours and days" to come, Faury said in his first public remarks on the issue.
Faury said in an interview on the sidelines of an ASD aerospace industry association conference that the planemaker would hold internal calls later on Tuesday to review the resulting impact on operations of the problem, first reported by Reuters on Monday.
He confirmed deliveries had been weak in November, but left a question mark over whether this would spill over to December as Airbus strives to hit a year-end target of "around 820" jets.
"We had a rather weak November because we had aircraft that we had to stop in the process of going from the end of production to delivery: (aircraft) that are finished but with a question on the panels," Faury said.
"We have to assess the situation of those aircraft and the ones that will be produced and delivered before the end of the year. That creates for December, which was already very backloaded, another challenge," he added.
'ONE MORE CHALLENGE'
Asked if Airbus could still meet its planned schedule for December, Faury said: "That is the question," adding the company may provide further updates in coming days.
"It is one more challenge for the end of the year and we are only on the 2nd of December. So in the next hours and days this will be clarified and we may be able to say to our customers and to everyone what it means for December and January," he said.
Typically, Airbus officials reiterate the planemaker's widely watched delivery guidance or refer back to previous statements when asked if its forecasts stand. But the flaws in fuselage panels have injected some last-minute uncertainty.
Airbus shares extended earlier losses and were down around 1.9% at mid-session. They fell nearly 6% on Monday.
NO PRODUCTION IMPACT
Reuters reported on Monday that Airbus had delivered 72 aircraft in November, lower than expected. Airbus declined comment ahead of a monthly bulletin due on Friday.
Faury stressed the problem was not related to underlying aircraft production, which suppliers say has recovered to a pre-COVID pace of just over 60 A320-family jets a month.
"We had a confined quality situation to deal with. That's not unusual, but what is unusual is that it comes in December on top of a situation that is already very backloaded," he said.
"We are assessing now aircraft by aircraft, production site by production site, customer by customer. There is some uncertainty which panels have to be replaced," he added.
Analysts are divided on whether the world's largest planemaker will be able to reach its key annual delivery target, with its use of "around" interpreted by some as an indication Airbus will give itself a 20-jet margin of error.
Anything lower than 800 would put Airbus under pressure to revise its guidance, several analysts have said.
Vertical Research Partners analyst Rob Stallard late on Monday cut his delivery target forecast to 790 jets.
Faury praised airlines for responding quickly to a separate recall of A320 jets for a software fix to deal with a vulnerability to solar flares, believed to have caused a mid-air pitch-down movement of a JetBlue flight on October 30.
He said Airbus would draw as many lessons as possible from the incident, a standard review process to keep flying safe.
(Reporting by Tim Hepher; Editing by Jan Harvey and Alexander Smith)
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