Airbus has around 40 gliders as of mid-June 2025, said Bank of America analysts, citing a Reuters report, more than doubling from the 17 gliders at the end of the first quarter.
Analysts Ronald Epstein, Benjamin Heelan and Carlos Peris said these ‘gliders’ – or completed airframes without engines – form a path to recovery in the second half of the year after a somewhat slow start to deliveries.
Airbus delivered 51 aircraft in May 2025, down from 53 in the same month last year, and down from 56 aircraft in the previous month. Year to date, the French OEM has delivered 243 aircraft to 61 customers. This is down from the 256 deliveries made in the first five months of 2024.
“Clearly, deliveries in the first half of the year have been weaker versus expectations at the beginning of the year, but in our view only marginally,” the analysts said. “We expect a very back end loaded delivery profile as we see deliveries accelerating materially in the second half as the flow of CFM engines improves through the second half.”
Aircraft engine supplier GE Aerospace CEO Larry Culp said supply chain improvements are supporting the company’s expectations for LEAP engine deliveries to grow 15-20% this year.
“We knew that we were going to have a slower start than any of us would have wanted in 2025, but… in terms of LEAP deliveries, growing in the 15-20% range continues to be what we believe we will do in 2025,” said Culp, speaking at the Bernstein Strategic Decisions conference on May 28, 2025. “It’s all about the supply chain dynamics… with the supply base, we’re really encouraged by the sequential improvement that we’ve seen in our deliveries from our critical suppliers.”
GE Aerospace said its deliveries from these suppliers improved double digits in April and May.
The analysts said it expects Airbus to provide “financial building blocks that should reassure investors” on its mid-term path, adding that it has the potential to be a “mid-teens EBIT margin business in commercial” for the period.
“We do not expect Airbus to provide mid-term financial targets,” the analysts said. They added that there is potential for the manufacturer to launch buybacks from 2026, with it expecting the company to end this year with around €13.5bn of net cash.
With the Paris Air Show kicking off this week, the analysts said this will provide a platform for “strong order intake” for Airbus and provide visibility for the next decade and beyond.
“We continue to see Airbus as one of the most attractive stories across the European industrial space with the backlog sold out until 2028-29 and strong order intake expected at the Paris Air Show,” said the analysts.
Airbus also made new appointments in its leadership team on June 13, 2025. The company appointed its current head of Airbus in Canada Benoit Schultz to Airbus’ chief procurement officer, effective October 1, 2025.
Schultz succeeds Jurgen Westermeier, who will take on the role of president of Airbus in India and head of south Asia from September 1, 2025. Schultz’s replacement will be announced at a later date. Westermeier will succeed Remi Maillard, who was recently nominated as EVP engineering of the commercial aircraft business and head of technology at the company.