An Airbus A321 flies at the Farnborough International Air Show, in Farnborough, Britain, July 22, 2024.
Toby Melville | Reuters
FARNBOROUGH, England — Huge airplane orders, hundreds deep in recent years, were absent from this year’s biggest air show. Instead, the focus was on the races at Boeing and Airbus to ramp up airplane production while battling a hangover from the pandemic marked seesaw production.
Many of the issues, particularly the training of new workers, will take years to fix, analysts say, meaning prolonged headaches for airlines, suppliers and the manufacturers themselves — and a shortage of new, more efficient planes.
“It’s a fair sentiment on the part of the supply base and the airlines to say that we didn’t meet our commitments in terms of timeliness, in terms of predictability,” said Ihssane Mounir, Boeing’s senior vice president for global supply chain and manufacturing. . , during a panel at the Farnborough Airshow outside London last week. “So obviously, people are starting to do their own planning and their own second-guessing.”
A roadmap for the next few months of production will come this week, when Airbus reports quarterly results on Tuesday, followed by Boeing on Wednesday. Wall Street analysts expect Boeing to post another loss for the second quarter and possibly the next. Airbus has lowered its delivery targets for the year.
Moderate orders
At the show, which ended on Friday, Boeing collected 96 orders and commitments, including earlier sales that had stabilized, while Airbus had 266, well below the 826 orders at the Paris Air Show a year ago, according to a count by Ishka Consulting. Paris and Farnborough alternate hosting the fair each year.
The muted orders during the show came as both manufacturers have been largely sold out of narrow-body aircraft such as the Boeing 737 Max and Airbus A321neo for much of this decade, if not longer. Boeing has a total backlog of nearly 5,500 planes, while Airbus has more than 8,000 on order. Many airlines from united airlines Air India has also been stocked with new jet orders as travel has rebounded in the pandemic.
Boeing’s presence at the air show was particularly modest – it did not bring any of its commercial aircraft for flight demonstrations, focusing instead on the safety crisis and manufacturing issues. Arlington, Virginia-based Boeing is trying to ramp up production of Max planes to about 38 a month, and investors will be looking for clues this week on when those goals could be reached.
Airbus unveiled its new ultra-long-range, narrow-body airplane, the Airbus A321XLR, which was certified by European regulators just days before the show opened.
Spare parts shortages
Air show visitors usually get a glimpse of fleets that will fly for decades, but most of the industry this year focused on production in the coming months.
Shortages of spare parts from landing gear to engine components such as high pressure blades Increasingly sophisticated cabin interiors, such as those with premium seats, are also in short supply. That has slowed production, depriving airlines of more fuel-efficient planes and angering some executives along the way.
Ihssane Mounir, Senior Vice President Commercial Sales & Marketing at The Boeing Company with Peter Anderson, Chief Commercial Officer of AerCap attend the press conference at the Farnborough International Air Show in Farnborough, Britain, July 19, 2022.
Matthew Childs | Reuters
Airbus is taking a more hands-on approach “than we’ve ever done before,” deploying more than 200 supply chain engineers among suppliers, said Christian Scherer, chief executive of the European manufacturer’s commercial airplane business.
“What we don’t want to see again in the future, whether we’re in an upswing or a slowdown in this industry, is a situation where the supply chain doesn’t believe what we’re telling it,” Scherer said. reporters before the show.
Airbus last month announced it would cut its plane delivery target for the year and said it would slow a planned production increase, citing “persistent specific supply chain issues mainly in engines, aerostructures and cabin equipment”.
Boeing, meanwhile, in addition to its supply chain issues, is trying to find its way out of a safety crisis stemming from a door plug explosion in January and a series of manufacturing defects that have slowed production.
Young workers, low wages in focus
The loss of skilled workers who were either laid off or opted for early retirement during the Covid-19 plunge in air travel has hampered the production of new jets. Manufacturers are now left to train new workers — a big challenge.
“I think it’s a three- to five-year thing,” said Kevin Michaels of AeroDynamic Advisory, an industry consulting firm. “Wages need to be readjusted to make the industry more attractive” to workers.
Boeing’s Mounir acknowledged that lower wages are a problem further down the supply chain and said Boeing itself should invest in their training.
“It’s out of the question,” he said. “I don’t expect these smaller suppliers that are important to the ecosystem to be able to shoulder that burden. We have to do it ourselves at the highest level, again, leveraging our balance sheet. It will pay off.”
It takes more time to train workers such as “bakers, butchers, people working in a very different business sector” who are new to aerospace, said Delphine Bazaud, head of industrial supply chain and digital business at Airbus.
Michaels, of AeroDynamic Advisory, predicted that in the case of the US, more aerospace work will eventually be moved overseas, “to places where the labor is available.”
