By the Leeham News Team

Christian Scherer, the former CEO of Airbus Commercial Aircraft. Credit: Leeham News.

 Jan. 13, 2026, © Leeham News: Deliveries for the Airbus A350 fell last year compared with 2024, reflecting supply chain challenges.

Christian Scherer, the former CEO of Airbus Commercial Aircraft, said, “The ‘stagnation’ of A350 deliveries is not a lack of demand. There is a center section of the A350 fuselage that is being built by a company formerly known as Spirit Aerosystems. They ran into trouble. They were the pacing item.”

Airbus acquired Spirit’s Airbus business when the company merged with Boeing in December. “Now that we have regained, let’s say, control of that particular center fuselage piece on section 15 of the A350, you will see the A350 continue its ramp up,” Scherer said during the annual Airbus media briefing of its annual orders and deliveries results.

Dissecting the results reveals:

Wide-bodies lag

• At 793, the 2025 delivery tally was the third highest after 2019 (863) and 2018 (809)
• Single-aisle deliveries surpassed their pre-COVID-19 peak (700 vs. 690 in 2019)
• Widebody deliveries are still lagging far behind: 93 in 2025 vs the peak of 173 in 2019. 93 is below the Airbus twin-aisle delivery level of 2008.
• Comparing year-on-year deliveries, most of the growth came from the A220.
• Airbus is struggling the most with the A350 production ramp-up:

• A320 family deliveries are relentlessly switching toward the A321neo.

Comparison of single-aisle deliveries by variant in 2025 vs the previous peak in 2019:

A220 and A321 deliveries almost doubled, while A320 deliveries were more than halved (the A319 does not matter).

• Regarding the Airbus comment on the A350 replacing older Dreamliners, it is more relevant for the 787-8 than the 787-9. It is a combination of the relatively poor 787-8 economics and aircraft up-gauging to accommodate traffic growth.

Working with the supply chain

Scherer said Airbus continued to work with the supply chain to resolve continuing bottlenecks and quality issues.

“We managed to further solidify our ramp-up and our industrial system. To achieve this, we made and continue to make substantial investments, modernizing our industrial capabilities by upgrading and expanding our global system.

“For example, all final assembly lines are now A321-capable, all single-aisle assembly lines are A321-capable, and we added two new A320 family assembly lines, one in Asia and one in America, last year in 2025 to support our ramp-up towards rate 75” in 2027, he said.

He said Airbus is streamlining the industrial flow throughout the production process, from detailed parts all the way to the final assembly lines (FALs). “Beyond the FALs, we are upgrading our customer delivery lines to increase capacity. We also opened a number of new lines for pre-final assembly section building and wings, plus a new facility dedicated to the A321XLR rear center tank in Germany, complementing our supply chain’s manufacturing capability.”

Acquiring Spirit’s Airbus work

Scherer said that to secure the A350 and A220 industrial organization and ramp-up, critical work packages from Spirit Aerosystems were acquired.

“It’s strategic. It brings wings, pylons, and key fuselage sections for the A350 in-house and adds 4,000 new skilled employees to our team, whom we welcome with open arms. They are strengthening the overall aerostructures ecosystem. We’re also growing and stabilizing our supply chain, from which we see continuous reductions of missing parts in very meaningful numbers, despite our significant rate increase.”

Airbus now sees a great deal fewer bottlenecks that must be managed, “because we manage them away. Nevertheless, we continue to face engine issues in 2025, with engines, particularly on the single aisles, arriving very late. We see that this trend continues in 2026, and in particular with Pratt & Whitney, with whom we are still in discussions.”

Scherer declined to detail the nature of the discussions.