LONDON—Air Lease Corp. (ALC) expects the Airbus A321XLR to only marginally fall short of its advertised range despite late design changes requested by the European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA).
The requests, and subsequent agreement between Airbus and EASA, have meant “adding a little more structure and a little more weight,” ALC President and CEO John Plueger said at the International Society of Transport Aircraft Trading (ISTAT) Europe Middle East and Africa conference in London Oct. 2. “I think Airbus will get 99% there, it is not a huge impact, maybe 150 miles and there is a weight reduction program going on.”
ALC is one of the largest customers of the long-range version of the A321neo with a firm order for 27 placed in 2019. According to the Aviation Week Network Fleet Discovery database, there are firm orders for 536 of the aircraft in place. Airbus has promised customers a 4,700 nm range, significantly more than the 4,000 nm that the A321LR achieved. However, added fire protection requirements have meant the aircraft will be somewhat heavier.
Plueger said the requirements have been onerous as EASA wanted Airbus to demonstrate crashworthiness with both engines off the aircraft. “I have never heard of any incident in commercial aviation with both engines falling off,” Plueger said.
ALC’s XLRs are affected by the ubiquitous delivery delays. Airbus was supposed to hand over the first aircraft in the middle of 2024, but now ALC expects it during the first quarter of 2025. The company has leased the first unit to Air Canada.
Plueger believes the XLR will not “fragment the market, I think it is going to add [to it]. You can serve a lot more secondary and tertiary cities on both sides of the Atlantic with this aircraft. The same is true for North to South America. It will stimulate traffic, adding services where a smaller aircraft makes sense.”
On the other hand, Plueger does not expect Airbus to launch a stretched version of the A220 “in the near-term future. Airbus has its plate full, and they have a lot of cost that they have to take out of the A220 program. It is not clear to me that the A220 program is profitable for them yet. I think there is a lot more to be done on the production side.”
Plueger also argues that the market is not ready for it yet. “A few big customers want it, but the global pathway is not quite there yet,” he argued. Air France-KLM and Delta Air Lines are thought to be customers most interested in the aircraft. Airbus Chief Commercial Officer Christian Scherer has said the aircraft is “not a matter of if, but when.” Many in the industry believe Airbus could launch the aircraft at the 2025 Paris Air Show with entry into service around the end of the decade.
