Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio, news. Let's talk about Airbus shares just barely finishing the day in the green. That's after they reported third-quarter adjusted EBIT that beat estimates. But it's not all good news. The CEO also sounding the warning bell that Airbus deliveries remain very backloaded. I'm pleased to say that that CEO joins us now. His name is Guillaume Faury. He is the CEO of Airbus. Guillaume, great to have you with us. Let's talk about this target. You say that you're sticking to the target to deliver 820 aircraft to customers this year. You've only delivered about 57 through September. So, what gives you the confidence that you'll be able to hit those numbers come the end of 2025?
The fact that we're fully prepared, that we're already close to end of October, and that one of the reasons for being backloaded is the lack of availability of engines for our single aisle. We were with 60 gliders mid year, we closed the third quarter being down to 32 gliders, and we think we're going to have the engines we need to deliver those planes before the end of the year. So it's indeed a lot of work in the last quarter of the year, but we think we have the ingredients. We're prepared to come close to the 820 deliveries we have guided for.
And would you say that the engines are still your biggest bottleneck at this moment? You mentioned the gliders for example. I know you had to park some readymade planes because of that engine issue. So is that the biggest issue would you say when it comes to the state of your supply chain?
The majority of what we're delivering are the A320 family aircraft, and indeed for those aircraft the main bottleneck is the engine availability from both CFM and PRA. We were with a very difficult situation at mid year. Things are improving. We think we're going to reach our numbers as I said before for 2025, but we will have persisting tensions on availability of engine in 2026 and maybe in 2027 as well.
I am curious, Guillaume, I mean we've heard from a lot of the major airline executives that have raised some concerns here about the backlog. In addition to just the general problems in getting those engines onto those gliders, there's now, at least here in the United States, the issue of a government shutdown that of course effectively brings to a halt or at least a slowdown in any sort of certification here. Have you had to address that at all so far?
Not to a major extent. We are not significantly exposed to this situation. Again, the main challenges we have are really on the delivery of aircraft, not on the certification of them. We have recently certified, I mean last year the XLR, that's behind us, and the A321 XLR is a great airplane that is now in service. That's behind us, and the next certification moving forward will be for the A350 freighter. But that's not today a short-term bottleneck. We have to start flying with the aircraft. That will be the case in 2026. So certification is for later. We plan entry into service in 2027. So we hope that in the meantime we will be able to restart or have appropriate and efficient certification work with the FAA, the primary certification authority EASA. And we're currently working with EASA for preparing the certification file of the A350 freighter.
