Airbus Is Coming for Boeing’s 737
The proposed A220-500 narrowbody jet and the larger A321 could put the US aircraft giant—which won’t have a new plane this decade—in a bind.
Designing a new commercial aircraft requires huge financial outlays and years of engineering wizardry, and success isn’t assured, as the short-lived Airbus A380 jumbo can attest. Such missteps—the double-decker jet never recouped its $20 billion in development costs before being dropped in 2019—explain why the aerospace industry’s preferred route these days is to tweak, stretch and reconfigure existing models at a fraction of the cost, rather than take the plunge with an all-new jetliner.
That lower-risk approach turned the Airbus A320neo family, with its new fuel-efficient engines, into the industry’s fastest-selling aircraft, and the stretched A321 model has become a hit with customers seeking a slightly bigger jet without the fuel burn of a widebody behemoth. Now, Airbus SE looks set to apply the strategy to its smaller A220, a model it picked up a few years ago when Canada’s Bombardier Inc. was forced into a fire sale of its troubled prestige project.