Airbus, the European aircraft manufacturer with a major plant in Bristol, is charting a course for a rapid recovery from the pandemic after clocking up its highest-ever profits last year along with a raft of new orders for its aircraft.
In what its chief executive officer Guillaume Faury described as a “year of transition”, Airbus delivered a better-than-expected 611 aircraft while landing orders totalling 771, more than twice the figure for 2021.
These helped lift net income to a record €4.2bn (£3.5bn) – against a loss of €1.1bn the previous year – on revenues up €2bn at €52bn.
Mr Faury, pictured, hailed the results as remarkable and praised the “resilience and efforts” of its teams, customers and suppliers, adding that the group’s attention had now shifted from navigating the pandemic towards recovery and growth.
Airbus axed nearly 300 jobs from the 4,500-strong workforce its Filton plant in June 2020, part of a total of 15,000 losses across its factories in the UK, France, Germany and Spain as the global aerospace industry was buffeted by the Covid-19 pandemic and its devastating impact on the aviation industry.
Airbus’s Filton employees are mainly engineers designing wings, landing gear and fuel systems for its commercial airliners.
Airbus now expects to ramp up production this year to 720 planes, increasing its decades-long rivalry with US planemaker Boeing, which delivered 340 aircraft last year.
Airbus in particularly is looking to steal Boeing’s crown in the crucial narrow body market over the coming years by outselling its 737 Max with its A320 family.
The 737 has traditionally been the workhorse of the low-cost flight market, with Europe’s largest airline Ryanair opting for it over Airbus’s alternatives.
But recently Airbus’s A320neo (new engine option) family has made inroads into Boeing’s dominance and has been outselling its latest version of the 737, the MAX, by a wide margin for several years.
Airbus has continued its success with new orders into 2022, most recently with US low-cost airline JetBlue Airways, which signed a firm order for an additional 30 A220-300 aircraft, pictured.
This takes the airline’s firm commitment for the A220-300 to 100 aircraft and lifting the total firm order book for the A220 to 740.
JetBlue started A220-300 operations last April and currently operates eight A220s in a 140-seat configuration.
The A220 is the only aircraft purpose-built for the 100-150 seat market and has a 50% reduced noise footprint and up to 25% lower fuel burn per seat and CO2 emissions compared to previous generation aircraft, as well as around 50% lower NOx emissions than industry standards.
