Airbus officials say the long wait to get an A350 and customer concerns over the Boeing 787’s development problems are hurting A350 sales.
“Airbus is shouldering the consequences” of the Boeing 787 difficulties, with carriers scared to become early customers, says Eric Chen, Airbus China senior vice president-commercial.
Additionally, Laurence Barron, president of Airbus China, notes that the government and airlines now are working on devising the 12th five-year plan covering the 2011-2015 time period, but A350 deliveries fall in the period covered by the 13th plan, so that is making it more difficult to get orders.
With a backlog of more than 550 orders for the A350 on the books, customers have to wait a long time and “that makes it more difficult here in China,” Barron says.
Airbus placed 5% of airframe work in China to help gain market access and so far has booked just 10 firm orders here. “Many airlines are strongly interested,” though, says Chen, and he expects more orders soon.
Barron also says that China Southern is still due to receive its first A380 next summer, and so far no delays are expected owing to the problems with the Trent 900 engines.
Meanwhile, Airbus expects to meet its target of building 26 narrowbodies this year at the Tianjin plant, having delivered 11 last year when it opened the final assembly site. Plans call for 38 aircraft to be produced next year.
For the year, Airbus has secured 69 orders in China year-to-date: 50 A320s, 16 A330s and 10 A350s Airplane Models. There have been 93 Model Aircraft delivered through the end of October, about 20% of the total for the aircraft maker.
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