Airbus targets 870 deliveries in 2026, competition with Boeing tightens
These specially configured A350-1000ULRs are expected to enable the world’s longest commercial flights.
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Airbus He said it was expected on Thursday 870 commercial aircraft will be delivered in 2026About 880 were slightly fewer than analysts expected. This comes as pressure mounts on the European aircraft maker alongside its US rival Boeing’s It is showing signs of recovery after years of crisis, which has benefited Airbus.
“Global demand for commercial aircraft supports our continued production expansion, which we are managing at Pratt & Whitney while facing significant engine shortages,” said CEO Guillaume Faury.
Airbus has faced delays for months on engines supplied by RTX subsidy Pratt & Whitney, and Faury said this was “the most important issue we’re on.”
Shares fell 5.2% in morning trading.
Sentiment about Airbus has worsened markedly since the start of the year, UBS analyst Ian Douglas-Pennant said ahead of its full-year report released earlier on Thursday.
Airbus delivered 793 commercial aircraft last year, slightly exceeding its revised 790 target. The company had lowered its previous target of 820, citing supplier quality issues with body panels that affected deliveries of the A320 family.
Barclays analysts described the outage as a “temporary execution glitch” and said the “long-term upside” remained “robust.”
While rival Boeing is struggling with a crisis due to design and production problems for its best-selling narrow-body aircraft, the 737 Max, Airbus has enjoyed strong momentum in the past few years.
Faury said last year was characterized by strong demand for all Airbus products, including helicopters, defense and space units.
Boeing shows signs of recovery
Deliveries are a closely tracked metric, as the bulk of the payment is paid to aircraft builders when the aircraft is delivered to the customer.
Airbus delivered 193 more aircraft than Boeing in 2025, but Boeing took delivery More orders for the first time since 2018.
This, along with Airbus’ recent quality problems, has led some to see Boeing’s tide changing under CEO Kelly Ortberg’s leadership.
Ortberg, who is eyeing the top spot in 2024 to emerge from the crisis, was positive in late January that his company could ramp up production in the near term after reporting fourth-quarter revenue that beat Wall Street expectations.
Airbus and Boeing’s order stocks have increased in recent years due to supply chain problems that emerged during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Boeing also achieved more deliveries and net orders than Airbus in the first month of 2026.
Boeing delivered 46 aircraft and had 103 net orders in January, while Airbus reported only 19 deliveries and 49 net orders in the same period.
Airbus’s January figure was quite soft; even accounting for the fact that their deliveries were generally lower at the beginning of the year.
“While deliveries in January of any year are not historically a good indicator of production rates for that year, we view the 19 deliveries on January 26 as being materially weaker than expected compared to the 25 deliveries on January 25,” UBS said in a note to clients last week..
“Due to generally low YTD levels, we cannot draw much conclusion from this trend other than that the expected 2026 delivery profile will likely be back-end-loaded again,” Barclays analysts said.
Boeing shares have outperformed Airbus over the past 12 months.
Airbus reported fourth-quarter adjusted earnings before interest and tax (EBIT) of 2.98 billion euros earlier on Thursday. consensus survey provided by the company. Revenues totaled 25.98 billion euros, slightly below the expected 26.5 billion euros.
For the full year, EBITDA totaled 7.13 billion euros, with revenues of 73.4 billion euros.
Going forward, Airbus said it expects adjusted EBIT of about 7.5 billion euros and free cash flow before customer financing of about 4.5 billion euros in 2026, along with a target of delivering approximately 870 commercial aircraft.
— CNBC’s Lee Ying Shan contributed to this report.
