Airbus has lowered its annual aircraft delivery target to around 790 aircraft due to quality issues with the fuselage panels becoming a "roadblock".

European aircraft manufacturer Airbus has lowered its aircraft delivery target for 2025 after discovering production defects in its best-selling A320 series aircraft that require additional inspections. The company's latest target is to deliver around 790 aircraft this year, 30 fewer than the original target. The company stated that the downward revision of the delivery target was due to "recent quality issues with fuselage panels from suppliers affecting the delivery process of the A320 series aircraft." It is worth noting that this is the second consecutive year that Airbus has been forced to lower its annual delivery target. This closely watched metric allows investors to assess the health of the aircraft manufacturer's supply chain and factory production processes. Airbus lowered its annual delivery target by 30 aircraft to around 770 in the middle of last year and eventually met that target. Earlier this year, Airbus set a delivery target of 820 aircraft, a target it reaffirmed in late October. This setback highlights Airbus's dependence on a still unstable supplier network. However, Airbus has maintained its annual financial targets unchanged, with adjusted EBIT expected to be around 7 billion and free cash flow before customer financing of around 4.5 billion. Investors have found some comfort in Airbus maintaining its key financial targets, as the company's stock on the Paris market rose 2.2% at the time of writing. The latest announcement temporarily put an end to a difficult week for Airbus. On November 28, Airbus announced that a significant number of A320 series aircraft need to be grounded urgently due to flight control software being susceptible to strong solar radiation. The company has urgently informed around 6,000 aircraft globally that they must undergo immediate software upgrades or hardware replacements, which equates to half of the global fleet of this series. The European Aviation Safety Agency has issued a directive prohibiting affected aircraft from carrying passengers or taking off until the issue is resolved. For most A320 series aircraft, restoring the software to the previous version that is not affected by strong solar radiation only takes "a few hours." However, some older aircraft may require hardware replacements, and these operations are expected to take several weeks. On December 1, Airbus announced on its official website that the majority of the approximately 6,000 A320 aircraft worldwide affected by the software issue have already undergone the necessary modifications. The company is now working with airline customers to support the modification of the remaining less than 100 aircraft to ensure they can return to service. On December 1, Airbus disclosed quality issues with some panels of the A320 series aircraft fuselage and is conducting rigorous inspections on over 600 aircraft that are already in operation or at some stage of production. According to industry sources, dozens of A320 series aircraft have quality issues with the fuselage panels, leading to delays in some aircraft deliveries, but there is no indication that the issue affects operational aircraft. Airbus confirmed this and stated that it is inspecting all affected aircraft. A spokesperson for Airbus stated that the root cause has been identified and controlled, and all newly produced panels meet all requirements. The disclosure of aircraft quality issues caused Airbus's stock to drop by nearly 11% on December 1, marking the most significant intraday decline since April 7 this year. In addition, Airbus is also facing issues with the engines of its newer A320neo aircraft. The Pratt & Whitney PW1100G engines used in this model have quality defects, leading to hundreds of aircraft of this model being temporarily grounded for maintenance. Tony Fernandes, the founder of AirAsia, said in an interview, "Pressure on quarterly performance, sometimes the pressure of competition, can lead to a decline in production quality. This is a good warning for everyone." Dudley Shanley, an analyst at Goodbody, pointed out in a report on Wednesday, "It is clear that Airbus would need an increase in production speed to meet its original delivery target."