KUALA LUMPUR: Airbus believes the demand for bigger aircraft will continue growing healthily as air traffic will be doubled every 15 years.
Airbus chief operating officer of customers John Leahy said the aircraft manufacturer expects to increase its production delivery of aircraft progressively, beginning this year.
“The market is strong with the recovery in the global oil prices, reaching close to US$70 per barrel. We see a lot of potential for wide-body aircraft,” Leahy said at the teleconference on the Airbus’ Commercial Aircraft deliveries in 2017 performance on Monday.
He said more people would want to fly and require bigger aircraft in anticipation of the congested air traffic.
“The market is stronger everywhere such as the stock market. The economy is firing in a right direction, which tells us that the air traffic should be about seven per cent growth or about 35 billion of industry profit in 2017,” he added.
Leahy pointed out that aircraft orders are stronger in the beginning of the year and it should continue moving forward.
“It will continue to have good sales on the wide-body aircraft. It has been doing well about 50:50 with our competitors wide-body sales in the last 10 years,” he said.
Airbus chief operating officer and president of commercial aircraft Fabrice Brégier said it would ramp up deliveries this year.
“We will get the Neo engine according to the commitments. If I take Pratt & Whitney, we managed to go through the toughest time.
“In 2018, probably it will be closer to two-third Neos and one-third Ceos. It will be a blend and a close to 800 deliveries in 2018,” he said.
Brégier said Airbus will deliver 12 units of A380s in 2018 and eight units in 2019, citing that it is projecting a flexible production with limit.
“We went through this exercise internally with the supply chain. We came to a conclusion that we need a minimum of six units of A380s a year to maintain industrially efficient production line.
“It is positive as I see it as a challenge. We are not looking at big quantities of the A380 during this more difficult period,” he said.
Airbus’ commercial aircraft deliveries in 2017 increased four per cent to 718 units from 688 units in 2016, marking its record-high in15th consecutive year.
Airbus said 718 aircraft were delivered to 85 customers globally. The 2017 total aircraft deliveries comprised 558 single aisle A320 Family (of which 181 were A320 Neo); 67 A330s; 78 A350 XWBs and 15 A380s.
It also achieved 1,109 net orders from 44 customers globally.
At the end of 2017 Airbus’ overall backlog stood at 7,265 aircraft valued at US$1.059 trillion at list prices.
Brégier said a new Airbus delivery record coupled with the company’s fifth best order intake wraps up a remarkable year.
“This outstanding achievement is testimony to the dedication of all our teams, and makes the company fitter, stronger and ready for the opportunities ahead,” he added.