Airbus pledges to increase output of new A350 wide-body jet

Airbus pledged to provide customers with 50 of its newest A350 wide-body jets this year despite supplier problems in 2015 that meant it fell short of a delivery target. Fabrice Brégier, head of Airbus commercial, the civil arm of the European aerospace group, blamed the failure to deliver the last of 15 A350s last year on problems at Zodiac Aerospace, a French supplier of seats and lavatories. “They did not deliver on their promises,” he said. “They were in denial. When top management is in denial, this is recipe for failure.”<br/>Both Airbus and Boeing, its arch rival, have a delicate task in managing global supply chains while accelerating production of passenger jets to satisfy increasingly impatient customers. Airlines that enter commitments to purchase the manufacturers’ most popular aircraft now will not receive their jets for several years because the companies have accumulated large order backlogs. However, as Airbus’s difficulties with Zodiac illustrate, delays to a single component can hold up an entire aircraft, resulting in penalty payments to customers. Brégier said he had driven the message home by choosing an alternative supplier to Zodiac for Airbus’s re-engined A330 Neo wide-body jet, which is due to enter service in 2017. “They got a wake-up call,” he said in Paris, at the group’s end of year review.<br/>