Airbus Balances A321neo Rework Against Portugal Eurofighter Pitch and Broughton Expansion
Published on 09/27/2026 at 14:02 | Editorial boerse-global.de
Airbus is pressing ahead on three fronts at once — civil industrial expansion, a defense sales push, and a quality fix on its best-selling narrowbody — while keeping its full-year delivery target firmly in place.
At its Broughton site in the United Kingdom, the planemaker confirmed on September 21 that it is converting a former A380 wing facility into a production line for the A321. Roughly 480 new jobs have already been created at the plant during 2026 as part of that build-out.
The British move is one piece of a broader capacity push for the A320 family. Airbus handed over the first aircraft from its second final assembly line in Tianjin, China, to China Eastern Airlines on September 16, and two days earlier opened a new delivery center at the Jean-Luc Lagardère site in Toulouse to support the ramp-up.
Fuselage coating issue affects around 500 jets
Running alongside that expansion is a technical problem the company acknowledged on Thursday. Coating defects have been found on fuselage components of the A321neo, specifically on reinforcement elements in the forward fuselage section of a particular batch. Airbus stressed that flight safety is unaffected and that a repair procedure has already been defined.
Citing Reuters, the inspection covers roughly 500 aircraft in the family. About 250 of those are already in service with airlines, while a further 250 are still in production. The A321XLR variant is not affected by the issue.
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Despite the extra inspection workload, management is holding to its target of delivering around 870 commercial aircraft to customers by the end of 2026.
Demand holds firm in Asia-Pacific
Support for that ambition comes from international traffic markets. On September 15, Anand Stanley, Airbus president for the Asia-Pacific region, told Reuters that his region is seeing no softening in either demand or handovers. Geopolitical strain and supply chain difficulties have not slowed the business, he said, with regional deliveries through mid-September running 9 percent above the equivalent period in 2025.
Unsolicited Eurofighter offer for Portugal takes shape
On the military side, Airbus is preparing an unsolicited proposal to supply Eurofighter Typhoon jets to Portugal, with the offer expected to be submitted in late October or early November. Lisbon is weighing the replacement of 28 modernized F-16M fighters with newer interceptors.
Airbus builds the Typhoon within a European industrial consortium alongside BAE Systems and Leonardo. A Portuguese order would give the defense division additional production visibility and further entrench the model among European air forces.
Buyback and market reaction
Airbus is also putting spare liquidity to work internally. About two weeks ago the company began buying back up to 4,100,000 of its own shares on the market to service employee share plans and stock-based compensation programs. The program runs until November 6, 2026 at the latest.
Investors took the week's news in stride. The stock closed Friday with a modest decline of 0.7 percent at EUR 194.10, leaving it above its 200-day moving average of EUR 190.57.
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