> United specified that the removal of the MAX 10 from its delivery outlook was due to the unknown certification timeframe for the largest variant of the MAX family.
> “We are in the market for A321s, and if we get a deal where the economics work, we’ll do something. If we don’t, we won’t and will wind up with more Max 9s.”
The A321neo delivery schedule is late and incredibly backlogged too.
Like this message is literally saying "we are stuck with our second choice".
As a vendor, this is a sign that you're really boned. Maybe this order will go through, but you're going to have to work your butt off after this one.
Large airplane orders are always significantly discounted. Airbus has an easy option here, reduce discounts (which rumor is they have already done significantly) and make a lot of money. Let the queue be the queue, they can't add extra capacity in the short term anyway.
The current backlog is around 8500 aircraft, and their current production rate is around 700-800 aircraft per year. Last year they build 570 A320's - so around 48 per month. Airbus' goal is to get to 75 per month by 2026.
Aircraft factories are obviously very expensive, and super expanding to burn down the queue right now would probably harm Airbus in the long term, especially since the airliner market is uh... really cyclical. I understand that the current backlog is something of a result of the pandemic.
A321neo: 1282 delivered (since 2017!), 6169 orders, so 4887 in the queue (or about 25 yrs worth [1]).
A320neo: 1929 delivered (since 2014!), 4124 orders, so 2195 in the queue (or about 11 yrs worth).
Across all aircraft, 15,276 delivered, and 23,828 ordered, so their outstanding orders are more than half of all Airbus ever delivered (and more than 60% of all Airbus in operation).
Must be nice to work for their sales department...
[0] https://www.airbus.com/en/products-services/commercial-aircr...
[1] with the assumption that the production rate remains the same as since introduction (obviously unrealistic, just to get a rough picture).