The French planemaker and Boeing rival is dealing with a production slowdown at Spirit Aerosystems
What should be a clear runway to world domination remains pock-marked with difficulties for Airbus (AIR) — one of them an especially ironic one. Reuters reports that the French planemaker is disappointed in the production it’s getting out of Spirit Aerosystems (SPR), the fuselage supplier at the heart of rival Boeing $BA’s (BA) door plug blowout scandal.
The outlet says that Christian Scherer, head of the commercial airliner division at Airbus, told a gathering of French aerospace journalists that Spirit’s rate of manufacture is “not exactly where we would like.” Airbus is facing pressure to massively increase its airplane deliveries in order to hit its year-end guidance, which it has already had to cut once this year amid supply chain difficulties.
When the door plug fell off a Boeing 737 Max 9 in January and triggered a Federal Aviation Administration-imposed throttling of production to address quality control issues, Airbus told investors that it didn’t expect to hit any of its own plane-building roadblocks. But it has — to its customers’ frustration. (Besides the Spirit speed issue, Scherer told the French gaggle that it was also running into delays with engine supplier CFM International (GE).) In August, Scherer told the Wall Street Journal (NWSA), “I thought we were going to be in a better place.”
It is especially ironic for Airbus because the window of opportunity that Boeing’s misfortunes opened was due to a fuselage constructed by Spirit, which Boeing spun out in 2005. In order to cut down on so-called “traveled work,” a manufacturing process where plane parts are assembled out-of-order in order to speed completion, Boeing reabsorbed the non-Airbus parts of Spirit in July for $8.3 billion.
Though Airbus shares had risen slightly in Friday trading, they’re still down about 7% for the year after being up nearly 23% during the summer.
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