Guillaume Faury, chief executive of Airbus, said the successor to the A320neo narrow-body jet will be launched in 2030, according to an interview published Friday by French regional newspaper La Depeche du Midi. Airbus is one of the world's two largest planemakers alongside Boeing.
The interview took place on Thursday, September 3, 2026, at Airbus's headquarters in Toulouse. Faury also discussed the company's production rates and a plan to merge its space business with Thales Alenia Space and Leonardo.
Delivery target held despite engine shortfall
Faury said the delivery goal set at the start of the year remains valid. He said a difficult first quarter was followed by a strong second quarter, during which early problems, including delayed Pratt & Whitney engine deliveries, were resolved.
He said Pratt & Whitney had agreed to supply a certain number of engines in 2026 but then cut that number to prioritize aircraft already in service but grounded. Airbus and the engine maker have since reached a new agreement on engine numbers for 2026, 2027 and beyond, though Faury said a commercial dispute over this year's shortfall remains and is being negotiated amicably.
He said CFM, the French-American engine maker that also supplies the A320 family, is fully honoring its commitments and delivering slightly more engines than planned, which is not enough to offset the Pratt & Whitney gap but allows Airbus to keep its target of 870 aircraft deliveries in 2026. Faury noted that figure would match Airbus's pre-pandemic peak of 863 deliveries in 2019.
Ramping up A320 and A350 production
Asked about the goal of building around 75 A320-family aircraft a month by the end of 2027, Faury said Airbus may not hit that exact date but will get there. He said the industrial setup built over the past six years is now fully operational, with ten assembly lines now able to build both A320 and A321 jets, compared with eight lines before the pandemic, only four of which could assemble the A321, the model now preferred by customers. He said Airbus is also ramping up its long-haul A350 program and studying going beyond 12 deliveries a month.
New jet promises up to 30% less fuel use
On the A320neo's successor, Faury said Airbus is making major progress with its teams and suppliers but is staying discreet to protect the final design from competitors. He said the aircraft will burn between 20% and 30% less fuel than an A321neo, with half the gain coming from the propulsion system and half from the airframe itself.
He said reducing weight and drag will require work on the airframe's aerodynamics and, above all, longer, thinner wings capable of adapting to turbulence, along with electronic controls for wing surfaces. The aircraft will also carry stronger onboard computing and data transmission for predictive maintenance. On the engine side, Faury said Airbus is working with CFM on larger, uncased open-fan engines with a much bigger propeller diameter, which requires new gearboxes to separate the propeller's rotation speed from that of the engine core.
Sustainable fuel push, hydrogen plan delayed
Faury said the new aircraft should be able to fly on 100% sustainable aviation fuel (SAF), up from 50% today, but Airbus will likely choose a design also compatible with fossil fuel because SAF supply remains limited. He said Airbus will make its major decisions on architecture, propulsion, wings and systems over the next two to three years, launch the program in 2030, and aim for entry into service in the second half of the next decade, representing an investment of several tens of billions of euros.
Asked whether a hydrogen-powered airliner has been abandoned, Faury said that after five years of studies, Airbus concluded a hydrogen aircraft designed today would be less competitive than a conventional one under current market conditions. He said Airbus is now running a further technology development phase to improve hydrogen aircraft's competitiveness and will reassess the question in a few years, hoping the decarbonized hydrogen industry will have progressed by then. He said he still believes hydrogen, including electric aircraft powered by hydrogen fuel cells, will eventually be part of decarbonizing aviation, and that the question is not whether it happens but when.
Space merger with Thales and Leonardo
Faury said the BROMO project, which would combine Airbus's space activities with those of Thales Alenia Space and Leonardo, is crucial because Europe invests too little in space and public orders remain fragmented, while the space industry depends heavily on scale. He said Airbus, Thales and Leonardo concluded it was time to pool their forces, as was done previously with commercial aircraft, helicopters and the missile maker MBDA, without which investment capacity and competitiveness suffer.
He said Airbus is in talks with the European Commission to show the tie-up would strengthen European industry against American rivals without harming competition, and that the companies hope to finalize the alliance in the second half of next year. Faury said businesses that once competed against each other will instead invest together in new technology, become more competitive in satellite constellations, military programs and possibly exploration, and win more contracts. He said the deal should reassure employees, since it would create a company able to compete at the right scale.
Hiring plans in France
Faury said the wider French aerospace industry recruited between 20,000 and 25,000 people from 2023 to 2026, with a quarter of the French workforce hired since the Covid-19 pandemic to meet rising production rates. Airbus itself made 3,200 hires in France in 2025, and over the past decade the group has recruited 10,000 people a year worldwide, split roughly equally between France, Germany and the rest of the world.
He said hiring for the A320 family will slow once the 75-aircraft-a-month rate is reached, but the long-haul A350, assembled in Toulouse, will need additional staff as Airbus aims eventually to exceed a production rate of 12 aircraft a month.
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