Airbus pensa al successore dell’A320

[malpensante]

Faury: We Are Really Serious About The Successor Of The A320'

Jens Flottau June 05, 2025

Airbus CEO Guillaume Faury has reaffirmed Airbus’ commitment to launching a new narrowbody around the turn of the decade.

Faury says in a forthcoming interview with Aviation Week that Airbus plans to select an engine in 2027 for a launch around 2030 and entry-into-service in 2037 or 2038.

A longer version of the A350 that would come close to the passenger capacity of the Boeing 777-9 is also a possibility in the longer term, Faury says.

Airbus recently made significant changes to its senior management team, appointing Rémi Maillard as the new Executive Vice-President Engineering and moving current Chief Technology Officer Sabine Klauke into a new role that focuses on digitalization of design, manufacturing and services. “This management team has the unique responsibility to prepare the launch of the product that will replace the A320,” Faury says. “We do not only need the right technologies, partners and architecture, but also the right skills.”

Faury stresses that he thinks the timeline Airbus has identified is perfectly in line with market demands. “Today’s market is not calling for a new plane for entry-into-service now. But if we look at the second half of the next decade, 12 to 13 years away from now, the market will not only be ready for it, but it will be calling for it. The market will be looking for more fuel and cost efficiency. This would be around 20 years after the entry into service of the [A320neo], so at the right point in time.”

To keep the timeline, Airbus will have to make a decision about the engine architecture—open rotor or geared turbofan—around 2027, Faury says. As work progresses, “there is uncharted territory for an engine of that size. You will see prototypes flying, demonstrators validating specific technologies and the engine will fly before we finally select it.”

Faury says he prefers to be able to offer airlines a choice of two engine manufacturers on the program. On the other hand, “the 737 has been successful with one engine for a long period of time, we have a very successful A350 program with one engine type, you also have only one [engine type] on the 777X. So, both models can work. If we went for the [CFM International] RISE engine it would mean that we consider the performance we will get from it would offset having two manufacturers competing in the market.”

Airbus is very unlikely to do another major upgrade of the A320neo family such as the proposed “A322,” mooted as a longer, re-winged and re-engined A321neo. “We are really serious about the successor of the A320 and therefore we don’t want to be distracted. Never say never, but it will most likely not be the case,” Faury says.

Faury says a further stretch of the A350 beyond the -1000 is a possibility “at a later stage. It will probably be a natural evolution of the product line to continue to increase capacity from the -900 to the -1000 to something slightly longer, bigger, with more capabilities that will come close to the 777X in terms of seat count.” However, “we don’t feel the need to do something more that would create more diversity of products when ramp-up capacity is limited.” He describes that as potentially being “counterproductive.”

Faury is non-committal when it comes to a stretch of the A220, a long-planned project that, industry sources say, is becoming more concrete quickly. “Those decisions are not made until they are made. The last mile is sometimes very long and sometimes you don’t reach the destination. Nothing is planned in the short-term and beyond the short-term there is uncertainty,” he says.

The Airbus CEO also says he supports EU counter-tariffs against U.S. aerospace products “to force a negotiation. I believe indeed that if it is not possible to get to an agreement by negotiation and by being rational, there must be a symmetrical response. Nobody can pretend that there was imbalance in trade conditions because there is a trade agreement that says zero tariffs for everyone.”

However, fundamentally, Airbus does not like tariffs. “We are a European player, but we are also a U.S. player to a certain extent and speaking to our U.S. colleagues they also suffer from the tariffs. We believe the tariffs are lose-lose for the Western/North Atlantic aerospace ecosystem that we are a part of, and that the endgame should be no tariffs.”


https://aviationweek.com/air-transport ... 0000434175