Airbus Says Air India Accident Is Learning Moment for Industry

(Bloomberg) — Airbus SE said the fatal accident on Thursday in India involving a Boeing Co. airliner should spur the industry as a whole to advance its safety culture, dismissing the notion that the crash could bring a competitive edge to one planemaker over the other in the global duopoly. 

“Safety is in everything that we do, so the tragedy in India, we don’t see that in any way, shape or form as a competitive input,” Christian Scherer, who oversees Airbus’s commercial aircraft operation, said at a press meeting in Paris. “It is, if anything, a reminder to us all that aviation has become so safe that, statistically speaking, every accident is totally unacceptable.”

The crash of an Air India 787 Dreamliner on Thursday killed more than 240 people on the aircraft as well as people in the densely populated urban area where the plane exploded. The episode has added to several high-profile incidents that have shaken confidence in the safety of flying in recent years, after the industry enjoyed a long phase of few crashes, including 2023 where there was not one fatal accident involving a large jetliner.

The cause of the crash, which ranks as the worst civil aviation disaster in more than a decade, remains unknown. For Boeing, the tragedy was the first time the company has lost a 787 model, one of its most popular aircraft. Airbus competes in that space with its A350 jetliner and the smaller A330neo plane.

Scherer spoke alongside Chief Executive Officer Guillaume Faury ahead of the Paris Air Show, which kicks off next week and marks the key annual gathering for the industry. Faury’s counterpart at Boeing, Kelly Ortberg, has canceled his appearance at the event in order to help coordinate his company’s response to the India tragedy. 

“Every incident in this industry is an immediate remainder of what can go wrong,” Scherer said.

Faury said the company still plans to ramp up output, but that the goal of doing so has become “a little bit more difficult” as global volatility and supply-chain constraints persist. At the same time, the company reiterated its goal of delivering 820 aircraft to customers this year, and Scherer said there’s a “meaningful decline” in missing parts as the overall supply chain improves.

Chief Financial Officer Thomas Toepfer, who appeared alongside other executives at the event, said that given the continued volatility in the market, the company would be less inclined to consider buybacks as a financial tool for the time being.

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