DALLAS — Airbus made public today its Half-Year results for the year 2024, which show a fairly consistent and powerful position in the middle of a historic crisis in commercial aviation due to the enormous shortage of raw materials to produce aircraft.
The European manufacturer revealed that, since January, it has delivered up to 323 aircraft to customers worldwide, the highest number since 2019. The last plane presumably included in this group is the first Airbus A220-300 unit delivered to Croatia Airlines, which landed in Zagreb on July 29 from Mirabel (YMX) in Canada.
In terms of orders received, Airbus collected 327 aircraft units during the first half of 2024, which is enormously below the previous year’s results (1,080 aircraft). The central figure behind this massive difference is the rapidly growing Indian market. At the Paris Air Show 2023, IndiGo (6E) placed the biggest-ever Airbus order in history for 500 A320neo family jets.
Pending approval from the FAA, the A321XLR is already certified to fly within Europe but is yet to be transatlantic to North America. Photo: Adrian Nowakowski/Airways
As If the Raw Material Shortages Never Happened
Of the 323 aircraft delivered during the first six months of 2024, the A320 family, with 261 airframes, was the plane customers most repeatedly received from Airbus. This statistic will grow positively as the European manufacturer boosts production by opening a new final assembly line in Toulouse (TLS).
The raw materials crisis inside Airbus has yet to affect orders or deliveries. Since 2021, the company has kept very consistent in its statistics, with natural slight growths as the market develops over time.
Still, predictions indicate that a productivity downfall will eventually happen, as the Russia-Ukraine war has severely limited access to resources to build new planes. The previously mentioned 6E would reportedly not see any A320neo from its latest largest order in any of its hubs until at least 2030, and the last plane would not arrive until 2035 at the earliest.
One of the key players in Airbus's consistency of production, at least for now, is the finalization of the Beluga XL fleet upgrade. The last unit ever produced by the manufacturer made its commercial debut in June 2024, growing the fleet to six XLs.
In financial terms, Airbus reported revenues of €28.8 billion, a 3.8% increase from last year.
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Exploring Airline History Volume I
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David H. Stringer, the History Editor for AIRWAYS Magazine, has chronicled the story of the commercial aviation industry with his airline history articles that have appeared in AIRWAYS over two decades. Here, for the first time, is a compilation of those articles.
Subjects A through C are presented in this first of three volumes. Covering topics such as the airlines of Alaska at the time of statehood and Canada's regional airlines of the 1960s, the individual histories of such carriers as Allegheny, American, Braniff, and Continental are also included in Volume One. Get your copy today!
December 2024
