FRANKFURT—Airbus has decided to change leadership of the important A320neo family program, as the program continues to struggle to meet its internal output targets.
Michael Menking, who has run the program since 2019, is being replaced by Christoph Zammert, Executive Vice President Products and Services at Airbus Helicopters.
The move comes after Airbus had missed its 2022 delivery targets for the A320neo program by a significant margin. At the time, Airbus largely attributed the shortfall to supplier issues that are affecting the entire industry. However, January’s delivery performance rang alarm bells internally as Airbus only put out 20 A320neo family aircraft. The numbers have improved since as Airbus handed over a total of 106 of the narrowbodies in the first three months of the year.
But the average output of just 35 aircraft per month is falling far short of its ambitions to fast grow production.
Airbus aims at delivering a total of 720 aircraft in 2023, up from 661 in 2022, and about the same number it had initially targeted for last year. The bulk of production is made up by the A320neo family as A330neos, A350s and A220s are produced at much lower rates—or just below three, five and six aircraft per month, respectively.
The company was forced to delay its ramp-up to 75 aircraft by one year to 2026, again mainly citing supplier delays. But the move to replace Menking shows that internal shortcomings are being recognized more and more by the company’s leadership. Menking is being moved to a special projects role, reporting to Philippe Mhun, Executive Vice President Programs and Services.
Airbus is in the process of resetting its A320neo production system, an exercise that will still take several years to complete. A second final assembly line will be added in Mobile, Alabama, in 2024 with a second line also opening in Tianjin, China, at the end of 2025. Airbus also recently decided to move two modernized A320neo family lines into the former A380 final assembly hangar in Toulouse, closing the legacy production facility that has been operating since the start of the program in the 1980s.
Hamburg remains the largest A320neo production site, and it, too, is undergoing gradual modernization. But because of the challenges in the ramp-up, Airbus has slowed down the introduction of new techniques to be able to focus on delivering the volumes promised to its customers.
Airbus did not officially comment.
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