Airbus and Boeing make July bumper month for aircraft orders

Aircraft deliveries took off in July this year in a boost for Britain, with 120 passenger jets delivered by the manufacturers Boeing and Airbus despite wider difficulties in the supply chain.
According to ADS Group, the trade association for the aerospace, defence, security and space sectors in Britain, this represents the best July for aircraft deliveries on record, as well as the best month in the year to date.
In total, 131 orders were confirmed in July, largely those announced at the Farnborough International Airshow to either Airbus or its American rival Boeing. This was 17 per cent ahead of 2023.
There were 89 single-aisle aircraft ordered, a 46 per cent increase on July 2023. Yet the figure of 42 wide-body aircraft ordered was 18 per cent down on the previous July.
Year-to-date aircraft orders, at 620, were two thirds below the same period in 2023.
The number of aircraft on backlog order was 8 per cent ahead of the same time a year ago at 15,675, equivalent to more than ten years’ worth of work at current production rates.
ADS estimates that the work is worth at least £245 billion to Britain’s aerospace sector. It has 1,300 member businesses and more than 90 per cent of these are small firms.
Airbus’s sites at Filton, near Bristol, and Broughton, north Wales, design, test and manufacture the wings for all Airbus’s A320 family, A330 and A350 commercial aircraft, directly sustaining more than 8,000 full-time jobs. The A220 family wings are designed and built by Spirit AeroSystems in Belfast.
Guillaume Faury, chief executive of Airbus, said this year that the European aerospace and defence group was trying to balance resurgent demand from airlines with a supply chain that was a “world of bottlenecks” with a “lot of complexity”.
Aimie Stone, chief economist at ADS, said: “Complications within the supply chain, coupled with regulatory uncertainty, continue to impact appetite for new aircraft. Despite this, and a healthy order backlog, it is reassuring to see industry continue to ramp up production to reach record-breaking delivery heights in July.
“To combat these difficulties within our supply chain, the UK government must reconfirm its commitment to a coherent industrial strategy in order to better support our ecosystem to untap this significant potential addition to the UK economy.”
Farnborough International is a wholly owned subsidiary of ADS Group. Deals totalling £81.5 billion announced at this year’s show in July were worth at least £13 billion to the UK economy at today’s prices.
They included Flynas, a Saudi Arabian low-cost carrier, agreeing a memorandum of understanding for a total of 160 Airbus jets, including 75 A320neo aircraft and 15 wide-body A330-900s. The airliners have a catalogue price totalling $13 billion.
Abra Group, the majority investor in Avianca, a Colombian carrier, and in Gol, a low-cost Brazilian airline, signed a deal for five A350-900s, taking Airbus’s sales tally to just short of 150 aircraft.
Another low-cost carrier to get out its cheque book was VietJet Air, a Vietnamese carrier, which signed an agreement with Airbus for the purchase of 20 new-generation, wide-body A330neo (A330-900) aircraft, totalling $7.4 billion at the manufacturer’s list price. It was one of the largest deals at this year’s event.