Saj Ahmad, of aerospace blog FleetBuzz Editorial, points us in the direction of some interesting numbers from Airbus yesterday.
The European planemaker announced a cut in production rates for its aircraft on Thursday.
Airbus is adapting production rates of its A320 Family programme from 36 to 34 a month from October 2009 onwards. Production rates of the A330/A340 family will be paused at the current level of 8.5 a month, and not increased further as previously planned. This decision reflects Airbus’ current view on market demand in times of airlines adapting their capacities and of continuing uncertainties caused by the worldwide economic crisis. At this point, no impact on employment is foreseen.
Makes sense. Airlines are under pressure from a global economic malaise, at the same time the dearth of liquidity means aircraft financing is harder to come by than in recent years. But it’s the actual production cut numbers that are perplexing.
Airbus delivered 386 A320s to its airline customers in 2008, or about 32 per month, and 85 A330/A340 aircraft — roughly seven a month, according to its 2008 results.
So cutting production from 32 a month – to 34 a month is, err, a mathematical (or grammatical?) impossibility. The same for trimming seven a month to 8.5.
Most mysterious.
Anyway Saj quotes Aerospace consultant Doug McVitie on the subject.
Airbus is trying to give the impression it is reacting ahead of time, but it is not reacting at all. How come there are no layoffs?
Airbus are not actually cutting anything as the unions of course wouldn’t allow it.
Saj also notes that if the planemaker really was trimming production, there would be a raft of delivery cancellation announcements. He says:
The only other plausible scenario here is that Airbus has a raft of cancellations that have yet to be made public – the numbers do not add up and in the absence of any major A320 operator stating that they want to slow down deliveries, cancellation of orders is the likely scenario that will inevitably emerge.
Related links:
Airbus cuts a smokescreen – FleetBuzz Editorial
Boeing hit by first big cancelled 787 order – FT