Airbus to Inspect Hundreds of A320s for Defective Panels

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Transcript

00:00Danny, what do we know about this latest issue for Airbus?

00:02This seems to be a week where the focus is on challenges around Airbus

00:05and now the latest in terms of one of its suppliers.

00:09Yeah, I mean, this is something about quality and production quality

00:13which Airbus will be acutely sensitive to.

00:15And really this revolves around some panelling on the fuselage

00:20which could be a risk in terms of flight safety.

00:25Not an immediate risk by any means.

00:27It's more to do with the thickness of how some of these panels have been designed

00:31but it's an issue that Airbus was made aware of

00:34and it's something that kind of affects around several hundred aircraft.

00:39Mostly newer aircraft, some aircraft that are in service,

00:42some are going through the final production line.

00:45And so therefore it's something that Airbus wanted to swiftly take action on

00:48to try and resolve the issue.

00:50Although it's an issue that is not something that is necessary,

00:54an immediate cause for concern, such like the software glitch

00:58which caused or had global disruption over the weekend for airlines.

01:04Yeah, so they had to work through that, didn't they, over the weekend

01:06with those updates across hundreds of their aircrafts to the software

01:10and now they're dealing with this issue.

01:12We focus then and we do now on the Airbus targets

01:16in terms of delivery by the end of the year.

01:18Some pretty ambitious targets, does this derail that ambition?

01:24I think it's a very good question given what Airbus is doing to inspect the aircraft.

01:28Particularly there are still many hundreds of these aircraft

01:31which are potentially at impact that are still on the production line.

01:36Whether they have to be reworked

01:38and that could then slow down the output of aircraft

01:42that are needing to be delivered.

01:43And the key thing here is that Airbus has now delivered

01:47at least 70 aircraft in November.

01:50That leaves them with a record 165 aircraft it needs to push through

01:54in order to hit its annual targets.

01:56Now, its annual target is 820 deliveries to airlines.

02:00So it's under real pressure.

02:02And for quite some time now, management has said

02:04it's going to stick to those annual targets.

02:06So given these latest concerns around quality

02:09or new concerns around quality

02:11it remains to be seen what impact that will have

02:14on its outcome for the rest of the year.