(Bloomberg) -- Airbus SE expects to return to delivery levels last seen before the pandemic in the “foreseeable future” as the planemaker presses its advantage against a weakened rival Boeing Co. and benefits from surging aircraft demand.
The planemaker handed over 766 jets in 2024, it said late on Thursday. While that’s just shy of its target, it’s far below the 863 handovers the company managed in 2019, before the pandemic decimated the aviation industry.
“The supply chain continues to have weak links but I’m confident that we’re on a ramp,” Airbus commercial head Christian Scherer said on a call with journalists. “We’ve addressed different supply-chain issues one after another as they developed, and that’s paying off.”
The upbeat projection points to a renewed optimism that the European planemaker has overcome the worst fallout of the pandemic. Scherer conceded that the company still has to contend with some lingering issues, such as missing parts and a workforce that’s still diminished. But the 2024 result is a success for Airbus, after the 770 target long looked out of reach.
In the end, the planemaker rallied to a last-minute production sprint to its target, which it was forced to pare back halfway through the year. Airbus set out with a target of delivering 800 aircraft in 2024.
Airbus also recorded 826 net orders last year, taking its backlog to 8,658 planes. While slots for its best-selling A321neo and A350 widebody are sold out until the end of the decade, Airbus said it was continuing to target customers for its smallest A220 model as well as a freighter version of the A350, particularly in the US.
The European planemaker declined to say how many planes it expects to build this year, a closely watched metric that provides investors with a gauge of the health of the commercial aviation industry. Analysts at Bloomberg Intelligence estimate Airbus will deliver 869 aircraft in 2025.
Boeing is set to disclose its annual tally of orders and deliveries next week. The US manufacturer has produced its aircraft at a far lower rate than Airbus after a near-catastrophic accident at the start of last year revealed quality lapses at its factories. As a result, deliveries last year were probably less than half of Airbus’s numbers.
While Scherer was broadly optimistic about his company’s prospects, some other industry players remain more cautious.
Jet leasing firm Avolon predicted on Friday that supplier issues will weigh on ramp-up efforts at both Airbus and Boeing for several years, for aircraft such as the A320neo and 737 Max narrowbody families.
The potential for tariffs as President-elect Donald Trump takes office could further complicate the recovery, as Airbus Chief Executive Officer Guillaume Faury pointed out separately on Thursday.
The supply squeeze is likely to lead to airline consolidation, Avolon CEO Andy Cronin said in an interview, as smaller players find it difficult to obtain production slots.
Airlines in fast-growing markets like India, Turkey and Saudi Arabia are best-positioned to feed their growth needs, after mega-orders in recent years. Indonesia is poised to crack the top five air-travel markets by 2042, rising from 13th in 2023, according to a forecast by Airports Council International.
China, meanwhile, needs to order more aircraft, with current backlogs accounting for just 32% of its existing fleet, Avolon said.
Rising trade tensions since the first Trump term have helped Airbus gain the upper hand over Boeing in supplying aircraft to the second-largest aviation market. Airbus also has the advantage of a final assembly line in China that produces the popular A320 family aircraft.
That said, President Xi Jinping is racing to develop home-grown Commercial Aircraft Corp. of China into a viable competitor to the US-Europe duopoly.
--With assistance from Anthony Palazzo.
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