After overcoming a software issue at the end of November, multinational European planemaker Airbus may have another mountain to climb as the month of December commences. The news comes as reports emerge that, after having largely managed to rectify an issue involving the software on more than 6,000 narrowbody twinjet commercial aircraft from its A320 family, the manufacturer has now discovered a separate quality issue.
This problem, reports suggest, doesn’t concern software that needs updating due to the potential impacts of solar radiation on aircraft’s flight control systems, but, rather, a more physical attribute, namely the plane’s fuselage panels. While initial details on this matter remain relatively scarce, it is thought that the issue in question is a production flaw, and, as such, is more likely to delay deliveries than impact aircraft that are already in service.
Impacts Are Already Being Felt In Terms Of Aircraft Deliveries
As first reported by Reuters, industry sources have suggested that Airbus has identified an industrial quality issue concerning jets in its popular A320 family of narrowbody twinjets. While the exact number of affected aircraft remains unknown, it is thought that ‘several dozen’ jets are facing a production flaw concerning their fuselage panels, with sources close to the matter indicating that the issue has already impacted deliveries.
While this may yet prove to have implications further down the line as far as the delivery timelines of new jets from the A320 family are concerned, it is not thought that the problem will affect aircraft that have already entered service. This gives Airbus an advantage in tackling the issue compared to its other recent challenge, where thousands of in-service aircraft had to undergo overnight software fixes in response to an airworthiness directive.
Simple Flying reached out to Airbus for further information on this matter. We did not receive a response by the time of publication, but we will update our coverage if and when a comment or statement is provided by the company.
Airbus’ 2025 Delivery Target Might Have Slipped Through Its Fingers
According to Reuters, while Airbus A320 family deliveries are known to have been impacted by this latest issue, the extent to which they will be delayed as a result is not yet known. In any case, there has already been a significant market response to the news of Airbus’ latest struggles, with CNBC noting that its shares were down 5.3%. However, CNBC also reported that Airbus had managed to identify and contain the issue in question.
Even without these issues, Reuters notes that Airbus faces a mammoth task in order to achieve its planned delivery target for 2025. The European planemaker was reportedly aiming to hand over in the region of 820 commercial aircraft to its customers this year, but, after October, it was 235 short of this figure. With Reuters reporting that another 72 jets were delivered in November, this leaves the company some 163 aircraft short of the total.
As such, it would need to exceed its existing December record (138 deliveries in 2019) to reach this target. In some areas, there is sufficient capacity for this to happen, with Simple Flying reporting last month that Pratt & Whitney had made enough engines for Airbus to hit this target. However, this is only one part of the puzzle, and success will also depend on other aspects of the supply chain and (potentially) overcoming this latest fuselage issue.
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The Software Issue Is Almost Completely Fixed
The news of the reported fuselage panel quality issue comes at a time when Airbus has barely finished dealing with another large-scale challenge. After passengers were injured on a JetBlue flight when the aircraft suddenly lost altitude, the European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) issued an airworthiness directive on Friday evening concerning the A320 family. This required more than 6,000 in-service jets to undergo software updates.
As airlines raced to implement this fix on Friday night and over the weekend, some passengers faced disruption, with the ITA Airways jet rostered to fly the Pope from Istanbul to Beirut among the aircraft that needed seeing to. However, the operational impacts of the situation were able to be kept relatively minimal on the whole, with Airbus issuing a statement earlier this morning confirming that fewer than 100 aircraft were still grounded.