Airbus SE expects aircraft engines to remain in tight supply this year, suggesting that the bottlenecks that have complicated output in recent years show no signs of abating any time soon.

The timing of engine deliveries on its bestselling A320 narrowbody continue to be an issue, Christian Scherer, the outgoing chief executive officer for Airbus commercial aircraft, said on a media call on January 12. The company is still in discussions with Pratt & Whitney, one of the two suppliers of engines on the A320, about future volumes, Scherer said. 

Engine shortages became an acute problem for Airbus last year, forcing the planemaker to build so-called gliders, or planes without engines, in order to keep production lines moving. While supplies caught up by the end of the year, the discovery of faulty fuselage panels on the A320 family then prompted Airbus to lower its delivery target in the final weeks of December.

Scherer, a company veteran who spent more than four decades at the European planemaker, handed over the reins to Lars Wagner, the former CEO of MTU Aero Engines AG, on January 1.

Airbus ramped up deliveries in December to 136 units, allowing annual deliveries to come in at 793, just above its goal of 790. Airbus also recorded 889 net orders last year, taking its backlog to 8,754 aircraft. 

The planemaker signed deals for more than 140 of the narrowbody A320 jets from Chinese airlines and a lessor in the last week of December. The manufacturer delivered 607 A320 family jets last year, the most since 2019.

Airbus hasn’t said how many planes it expects to build this year, a closely watched metric that provides a clue to the health of the supply-chain industry and factory processes. Analysts at Bloomberg Intelligence estimate Airbus will deliver 900 aircraft in 2026. 

Boeing is set to disclose its annual tally of orders and deliveries on January 13. The U.S. manufacturer has produced its aircraft at a lower rate than Airbus, after a near-catastrophic accident at the start of 2024 revealed quality lapses at its factories.

At the same time, Boeing probably beat Airbus in terms of aircraft orders, not least as U.S. President Donald Trump threw his support into deals with foreign airlines.

“It’s undeniable that Boeing benefitted from political backing,” Scherer said. But the executive added that would just make the planemaker work harder to win sales campaigns, particularly on widebody aircraft.