Airbus to expand its A320 Final Assembly Line in China

Airbus continues to make progress in China, with the airframer signing new cooperation agreements with Chinese Aviation industry partners.

An agreement was signed to expand A320 Family’s final assembly capacity with a second line at its Tianjin site.

It was witnessed by  Chinese President Xi Jinping and French President Emmanuel Macron, and signed by Airbus CEO, Guillaume Faury signed with the Tianjin Free Trade Zone Investment Company Ltd., and Aviation Industry Corporation of China Ltd.

Airbus currently has four A320 Family final assembly sites worldwide: Hamburg (Germany), Toulouse (France), Mobile (USA) and Tianjin (China).

The Tianjin Final Assembly Line started operation in 2008 and has assembled over 600 A320 Family aircraft to date. In March 2023 the first A321neo aircraft was delivered from the line, marking a new era of enhanced A320 Family production versatility.

The agreement will contribute to Airbus’ overall rate objective of 75 aircraft per month in 2026 throughout its global production network.

Progress on Sustainable Air Fuels too

Airbus and the China National Aviation Fuel Group (CNAF) also signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to intensify Chinese-European cooperation on the production, competitive application and common standards formulation for Sustainable Aviation Fuels (SAF).

Earlier in September 2022, Airbus and CNAF contracted to support commercial and delivery flights in China to be operated with SAF.

By the end of March, 17 delivery flights and a first commercial flight were facilitated by the two partners. This new cooperation agreement aims at optimising the SAF supply chain by diversifying the sources and enhancing SAF production towards the ambition of using 10 per cent SAF by 2030.

Some aircraft order tidying too

In addition, Airbus also signed General Terms of Agreement (GTA) with the China Aviation Supplies Holding Company (CAS) covering the purchase of 160 Airbus commercial aircraft. The GTA comprises earlier announcements for 150 A320 Family aircraft and for 10 A350-900 widebody aircraft orders.

In Quotes

Airbus CEO Guillaume Faury said:

“We are honoured to continue our long-standing cooperation by supporting China’s civil aviation growth with our leading families of aircraft. It underpins the positive recovery momentum and prosperous outlook for the Chinese aviation market and the desire to grow sustainably with Airbus’ latest generation, eco-efficient aircraft,”

“Airbus values its partnership with the Chinese aviation stakeholders and we feel privileged to remain a partner of choice in shaping the future of civil aviation in China.”

A big step for Airbus

Expansion of any production facility requires a lot of forward planning, as well as the logistics to support the move. As Airbus seeks to manufacture up to 75 Airbus A320 family aircraft a month, the manufacturer is seeking ways to boost that output.

Expanding one of its existing Final Assembly Lines whilst not an easy thing to do, it is doing so on a known site with known capacities, with customers locally who can take advantage of the products produced.

And the China market is a big market, even as local competitors seek to assert themselves.

It also shows that Airbus in theory can plonk a Final Assembly Line where it needs to, and build – as it showed in Tianjin and Mobile when there is a market to support it in the long term., providing its supply and production lines elsewhere can keep up – something that has been a challenge over the past few years.

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