Airbus aims to achieve 800-jet delivery target

Bloomberg

With just a few days left before 2018 is over, Airbus SE says it’s working flat out to reach a goal of delivering 800 jetliners during the year.
The Boeing Co. rival is maximising efforts to meet its target, which requires it to hand over at least 127 aircraft to customers in December.
Marketing chief Christian Scherer and his sales team are meanwhile still on the road chasing new orders, according to Airbus spokesman Stefan Schaffrath. “The year isn’t over,” he said.
After falling behind schedule this year amid supplier glitches with jet engines, Airbus gave itself a chance of meeting its main aircraft-related metric with a bumper November tally of 89 planes, 15 more than the previous year. Closing the gap would mean making the same number of December deliveries that it managed in 2017.
A fire at Airbus’s Premium Aerotec subsidiary in Augsburg, Germany, isn’t expected to have any impact on jetliner deliveries. Airbus is assessing the situation and will work with the aerostructures manufacturer on mitigation measures if necessary, Schaffrath said.
Toulouse, France-based Airbus scaled back its initial target of delivering 820 planes in 2018 at the time of its third-quarter earnings update, and also plans to include the A220 model recently acquired from Bombardier Inc., boosting its chances of reaching the new goal.
The pressure was further eased when Dubai-based Emirates last month accepted two A380 superjumbos it had initially refused to take in a dispute with Rolls-Royce Holdings Plc over the performance of the engines. Handovers of A330 wide-bodies have been held up partly by a cash crunch at Chinese conglomerate HNA Group.
Official order and delivery figures will be released next month.