Paris (AFP)
Airbus will install a new assembly line for its A321s in Toulouse to deal with the success of this model, which today represents 40% of the order book for the A320 single-aisle family, the aircraft manufacturer announced on Tuesday.
This assembly line, which will be added to that dedicated to the A321s located in Hamburg, will be operational "by mid-2022" and installed in the current site dedicated to the manufacturing of the air giant A380 and whose production s '' will be completed in 2021.
"The Jean-Luc Lagardère plant, the current A380 assembly site in Toulouse, will house an A321 chain equipped with the latest digital technologies, as part of a modernization of the production system of the A320 in Toulouse. new facilities will offer greater flexibility for the production of the A321, while maintaining a stable level of the overall industrial capacity of the single-aisle aircraft in Toulouse ", details the aircraft manufacturer in a press release.
At present, the only European final assembly line (FAL) for the A321 is located in Hamburg, in northern Germany, and is experiencing difficulties in ramping up due to the complex construction of the A321 compared to the A320. The Mobile site in the southern United States is also producing it.
This new assembly line in Toulouse, which will employ 500 people, responds to the need "to provide flexibility in our production capacity, not to increase production rates", we said at Airbus.
"We are enjoying strong demand which is reaching unprecedented levels for our leading A320neo family, in particular its long-haul (LR) and very long-haul (XLR) A321 derivatives", explained Michael Schoellhorn, chief operating officer of 'Airbus (COO). "In order to optimize the industrial flow, we decided to increase our overall production capacity and flexibility for the A321, but also to establish a new generation final assembly line in Toulouse."
The ACF version of the A321 allows more flexible cabin configuration and is more complex to produce than an A320. It includes the versions A321LR and A321XLR.
This latest model makes it possible to travel up to 8,700 kilometers in nine hours, thanks to larger tanks, and has met with great commercial success since the announcement of its launch in June.
At the same time, the two Toulouse assembly lines of the A320, dating from the 1980s, will be modernized.
The aircraft manufacturer plans to increase its monthly production rate to 63 single-aisle A320 family by 2021 in order to absorb an order book that exceeded 6,000 aircraft in this range at the end of December.
Airbus delivered 863 aircraft in 2019, the highest total in its history, while its competitor Boeing's orders ended in the red (deficit of 87 net aircraft), a first for decades, due to the crisis in the 737 MAX, the A320 competitor nailed to the ground since mid-March after two close accidents that killed 346 people.
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