Leeham News and Analysis
There's more to real news than a news release.
“Resilience is key” to Airbus production ramp-up
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By David Slotnick
March 5, 2026, © Leeham News: Airbus’ head of procurement shared a rallying cry for both OEMs and suppliers at the Pacific Northwest Aerospace Alliance (PNAA) in suburban Seattle on Feb. 10, ahead of the European planemaker’s plans to increase production to record-breaking rates.
Florian Seidel. Source: Florian Seidel.
In a speech at the annual conference, Florian Seidel, the chief of strategic procurement at Airbus Americas, urged the entire supply chain from top to bottom to focus on working “like Swiss clockwork” as manufacturing increases and airline customers continue to require support throughout each aircraft’s operating life.
The call for continued close collaboration and efficiency comes as Airbus sets its sights on production rates that exceed even peak pre-pandemic levels. While Airbus plans to increase rates on all of its commercial programs, Seidel described the target on the A320-family — 75 per month in 2027 — as “the most impressive” ramp-up, requiring a “huge effort across the entire supply base.” (Update: A week later, during the Airbus earnings call for 2025, this target has shifted to 2028.)
Additionally, Airbus plans to grow the A220 to 12 per month this year, the widebody A330 to 5 per month by 2029, and the flagship A350 to 12 per month in 2028.
“Resilience is key” to making that ramp-up successful and sustaining those rates, Seidel said.
“This is a ramp-up that’s unprecedented, and that we require the resolve of the entire supply base to make it happen,” he added.
The state of alternative propulsion aircraft? Part 6.
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By Bjorn Fehrm
March 5, 2026, © Leeham News: Before Christmas, we started a series examining the status of alternative propulsion projects. We finished on December 18 by looking at Series Hybrids, often as battery-electric aircraft with range extenders (Figure 1).
The range extender is the natural next step when a project realizes that a pure battery-electric aircraft won’t be able to fly the missions the market is asking for.
Figure 1. The Heart Aerospace Battery-Rlectric ES-30 with dual range extending turbo-generators in the back. Source: Heart Aerospace.
After a while, analysing the range extender, the drawbacks become increasingly obvious. Charging the battery system in flight or directly feeding the electric propulsion system from a turbogenerator is inefficient. The losses along the path from the gas turbine through a generator, an inverter, and then to a motor that drives a propeller or fan are much higher than when the gas turbine drives the propeller directly.
A series hybrid can’t compete on operational economics with the aircraft it shall replace (for example, the Cessna Caravan or the SAAB 340). Projects then turn to parallel hybrids, the subject of today’s article.
Aviation Traffic Paralyzed by Iran Conflict
Managing Editor, AIN
March 2, 2026, © AIN: Business aircraft operations across the Gulf region remained paralyzed on Monday as airspace and airports remained closed due to the ongoing military conflict between Iran and U.S. and Israeli forces. While the impact on airline services remains far greater, the business aviation sector appeared to have few options to exercise its usual flexibility to evacuate aircraft, crew, and passengers.
The full story may be found here.
Airbus: Repeatedly Missing the Mark on delivery guidance
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By Karl Sinclair
March 2, 2026, © Leeham News: With the closing of the 2025 financial year, Airbus SE (AB) estimated how many commercial aircraft it expects to deliver to customers in the coming 12 months.
Along with guidance on expected revenues, profits, and free cash flow (FCF), investors and analysts use delivery metrics to assess not only Airbus’s success but also how the heavily integrated supply chain beneath the OEM is functioning.
It only takes one missing part to keep an aircraft glued to the tarmac, and as the old adage goes, “When a supplier has a problem, Airbus has a problem.” Even when it is buyer-furnished-equipment (BFE), like interiors.
Airbus has missed its aircraft delivery guidance in each of the last three years. The company had to reduce its guidance as the lack of engines, BFE, other parts, and quality control issues combined to cause Airbus to miss its early guidance.
Related Article
How close do the estimates provided by Airbus, some 12 months out, come to reality at year-end?
Are the projections pie-in-the-sky numbers or can they be safely relied upon to provide a clear picture of the short-term future?
LNA takes a deep dive into Airbus guidance accuracy by analyzing the original projections for the previous three years, any changes that it has made to those targets, and how well those prognostications held up at year-end.
Open Forum, Week of March 2
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Maintain civility and follow Reader Comment rules.
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Bjorn’s Corner: Faster aircraft development. Part 29. AI and the Program Plan.
By Bjorn Fehrm and Henry Tam.
February 27, 2026, ©. Leeham News: Last week, we looked at the development timeline for Part 25 airliner programs to reach Entry Into Service (EIS) after launch, Figure 1.
We can see that development times have doubled from the 1960s to the 1980s, compared with development since the year 2000.
The main change is the complexity of the aircraft, both in terms of highly optimized structures using new materials and avionics/flight control systems with many software code lines that require extensive verification.
We concluded that modern toolchains, with the capability to produce so-called Digital Twins, helped avoid further slip in development times, but they could not reduce them. The question then remains, can the employment of AI change this?
Figure 1. The development times for airliners over the years. Source: Leeham Co.
Rolls-Royce boosts mid-term targets, CEO dismisses UltraFan loan speculation
By Thomas Blackwood
Feb 26, 2026, © Leeham News: Rolls-Royce posted strong 2025 full year results on Thursday, with profits up and upgraded mid-term targets, as the UK-based manufacturer restated the case for its re-entry into the narrowbody engine market.
Speaking to analysts, CEO Tufan Erginbilgic said Rolls-Royce was seeking partners for the £3 billion ($4 billion) Ultrafan 30 engine development project, which will allow the company to establish itself within the large and growing narrowbody market.
Responding to media reports that he was seeking a UK government loan of up to £200 million initially to help support the development and testing of a demonstrator, Erginbilgic suggested Rolls-Royce was looking for grant funding through initiatives such as the Aerospace Technology Institute (ATI) rather than any lending facility. The ATI programme co-funds civil aerospace research and technology development in the UK.
“Let me be very clear, we are not asking for any loan from anybody, not to mention government,” he said. “It is not actually uncommon that governments support R&D, and our competitors get two-three times what we do. They are not actually loans… so we are talking about that kind of support. We don’t need any loan, but we are in a competitive world.”
Boeing defects and rework fell due to better supplier relations: exec
By Justin Bachman
Feb. 26, 2026, © Leeham News: Boeing has seen quality rework hours on aircraft production drop 40% over the past year as its supplier base has trimmed defects, aiding the company’s recovery, Boeing’s supply chain head said.
Ihssane Mounir, the head of the Boeing Commercial Airplanes supply chain, at the 2024 PNAA conference. Credit: Leeham News.
The rework decrease through 2025 is “incredible and very significant,” Ihssane Mounir, senior vice president of Global Supply Chain and Fabrication for Boeing Commercial Airplanes (BCA), told supplier partners, speaking Feb. 11 at the annual Pacific Northwest Aerospace Alliance (PNAA) conference in suburban Seattle.
“When you think about how that happened, it’s a whole slew of things that had to happen to drive the number down that way,” Mounir said in a talk that touted Boeing’s recovery to its supplier partners after six years of crisis and production problems.
Mounir assumed the role of SVP, Supply Chain and Fabrication, in December 2022, following six years as BCA’s top sales executive.
“It’s you paying attention to quality. It’s us augmenting our quality in our engineering teams, our fabrication teams, and our support teams, and putting them with you and helping you,” he said. “It’s us increasing our engineering support and being more responsive to the changes and to the asks and the analyses that come our way.”
The prevalence of supply-chain defects and Boeing’s need to rework incoming parts and subassemblies during production had become a source of deep conflict between the company and many of its 1,200 suppliers for several years.
Strong OEM and maintenance business lift MTU to record earnings in 2025
By Thomas Blackwood
Feb 24, 2026, © Leeham News: MTU Aero Engines saw continued growth across its divisions in 2025 with revenue at an all-time high and continued MRO momentum, according to the company’s full-year figures published on Tuesday.
Adjusted revenue for the year was up 16% from €7.5 billion in 2024 ($8.84 billion) to €8.7 billion. Adjusted operating profit reached €1.4 billion, up 29% on the previous record of €1.1 billion set last year, and adjusted EBIT margin rose from 14% to 15.5%.
Adjusted net income also reached a new high of €968 million, up 27% year over year from €764 million. The results were in line with market expectations.
MTU said the revenue growth was driven by its commercial OEM division as well as the strong demand for engine maintenance. However there are still doubts over the strength of the supply chain. MTU said that while “improvements are evident … further progress is needed” to streamline the production and procurement of parts.
When does Boom go boom; military goes green and loses the battle
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By Scott Hamilton
Feb. 23, 2026, © Leeham News: “How long until Boom goes boom?”
“eVTOLs, the perfectly mediocre over-priced helicopter.”
“We lost the battle, but we had a lower carbon footprint.”
These are just a few of the pithy comments to come out of the annual Pacific Northwest Aerospace Alliance (PNAA) conference this month in suburban Seattle.
Boom, the 88-passenger supersonic transport program, was founded in December 2014. Ten years later, it flew a demonstrator aircraft that bears no similarities to the Overture SST that the company is developing as the first passenger SST airliner since the Concorde.
The Boom Overture SST has many, many skeptics. Two were speakers at the annual conference of the Pacific Northwest Aerospace Alliance. Credit: Boom.
No established engine maker agreed to power the Overture. Rolls-Royce had an exploratory contract for a time, but bowed out. Boom cobbled together three companies to make an engine. More recently, the company is going to use the engine, whenever it works, to power energy plants.
There are few believers in aerospace who think Boom will be successful, despite raising a reported $600m-plus in funding, building a production facility and winning conditional orders from Japan, United and American airlines.
Richard Aboulafia, a managing director of Aerodynamic Advisory, said he would just “write off” Boom. Kevin Michaels, also an MD at the same consultancy, was just as direct. “We have a bet in our office going how long until Boom goes boom?”
They were no more kind toward the prospect of eVTOLs, especially the possibility of the US military using battery-powered eVTOLs on the battlefield.