Airbus CEO questions A320 target over Pratt & Whitney delays

Airbus CEO Casts Doubt on A320 Production Target, Blaming Pratt & Whitney Engine Shortage

Airbus CEO Guillaume Faury said on Tuesday that the planemaker is unsure it can reach its production target for A320-family jets because of persistent engine supply shortfalls from RTX unit Pratt & Whitney.

The comments, made on June 9, mark the latest escalation in a months-long dispute between Europe’s largest aircraft manufacturer and the engine maker over delivery volumes for the PW1100G geared turbofan engine.financialpost

A Target in Retreat

Airbus had originally aimed to produce 75 A320-family narrowbody jets per month by 2027, up from roughly 60 per month currently. But the company has steadily walked back that ambition. In February, Airbus revised its target to a range of 70 to 75 aircraft per month by the end of 2027, with rate 75 pushed to sometime after that date. Faury told Bloomberg at the time that Pratt & Whitney’s engine delivery outlook for 2026 was “significantly behind their previous commitments”.reuters

By April, Airbus confirmed its full-year delivery guidance of approximately 870 commercial aircraft for 2026 but acknowledged that rate 75 had slipped beyond 2027. According to the Wall Street Journal, Airbus delivered just 114 planes in the first quarter of 2026, meaning it must dispatch around 756 units over the remaining nine months to hit its annual target.aerospaceglobalnews

The Engine Crisis

The root of the problem traces back to mid-2023, when RTX disclosed that a rare contaminant had entered the powdered metal used to manufacture high-pressure turbine and compressor disks in PW1100G engines produced between late 2015 and the third quarter of 2021. The defect required the removal of 600 to 700 engines from A320neo jets for inspections spanning up to 300 days each, grounding an average of 350 aircraft annually through 2026.reuters

That maintenance burden has diverted Pratt & Whitney’s capacity away from producing new engines for Airbus’s assembly lines. Reuters reported in February that the two companies had not finalized a supply agreement for either 2026 or 2027, leaving Airbus without guaranteed engine volumes. Reuters also reported in March that Airbus was pursuing a formal damages claim against Pratt & Whitney that could run into hundreds of millions of dollars.reuters

What Comes Next

Airbus has maintained its full-year free cash flow guidance of approximately €4.5 billion and its 870-aircraft delivery target, but the path forward depends heavily on whether RTX can normalize engine output. In October 2025, Faury warned that engine supply tensions would persist into 2026 and possibly 2027. That forecast has proven accurate, and analysts have flagged the possibility of further guidance revisions if the situation does not improve.wsj

Airbus said it plans to build only about 40 A320 jets per month for now, underscoring how far current output remains from the aspirational rate 75.facebook