Airbus Solicits Chinese Help to Increase A320 Production
By Aaron Karp, ATW Daily News | Apr. 30, 2007
Airbus plans to ramp up production of A320 family aircraft to a rate of 34 per month by March 2008, and likely to 40 per month by 2010 with help from a Chinese assembly line, to take advantage of rising sales.
The manufacturer has a current backlog of 1,992 following 91 deliveries in the first quarter. The monthly production rate, now at 32, was 20 as recently as 2003. It will hit 36 by the end of 2008. "The market is very active and we are seriously considering going to 38 [in 2009] and then 40 [in 2010]," Executive VP-A320 Family Program Alain Flourens said at the company's (late April 2007) Technical Press Briefing in Toulouse.
That rate will include a final assembly line to be established in China via a joint venture with Chinese investors in which Airbus will have a 51% stake. The China-based FAL will produce two A319s/A320s per month by 2010 and four by 2012, with the first aircraft to be completed in the 2008 second quarter, Flourens said. A320 production in Toulouse will be limited to 14 per month with the remainder to be built in Hamburg.
"We are selling the A320 extremely well," added EADS co-CEO and Airbus CEO Louis Gallois, who strongly indicated the monthly rate will reach 40 by 2010. And he cautioned that Airbus is "not in a hurry" to produce a next-generation version. "The day you launch a new airplane, you kill the value of those orders [placed for the current version]," he said, adding that a next-generation A320 is not viable until a new engine is developed. "It means not an improvement of the current engine but a new concept of engine."
Flourens said Airbus must add 1,200 workers for every rate rise of four A320s per month.