Hello, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Airbus annual press conference, where we'll present and discuss our full year 2024 results. My name's Julie Kitcher. I'm Chief Sustainability Officer and Head of Communications. Here with me to present the results are Guillaume Faury, our Chief Executive Officer, and Thomas Toepfer, our Chief Financial Officer. We're very, very happy to welcome you here again at our event center here in Toulouse. Thank you all for being here with us. Of course, a big thank you to those of us who are following us online too. Guillaume will start by sharing the key highlights for Airbus in each of our businesses and how the company adapted to a complex and fast-changing operating environment. It was indeed a testing year for Airbus and against a backdrop of continued geopolitical uncertainty.
So ladies and gentlemen, as usual, please can you familiarize yourselves with the safe harbor statement, which you can see on the screen now? Thank you. Please remember that all forward-looking statements, such as our guidance, are based on assumptions, and as conditions may change, so may our projections and our plans. And now, before I hand over to Guillaume for an overview of 2024, I'm really pleased to share this video, which is a great reminder of the key achievements for Team Airbus in 2024. I hope you enjoy watching it. We certainly enjoyed putting it together. So we'll be back with you in a moment.
Thank you, Julie, and hello, everyone. Thank you for joining us in Toulouse. Appreciate to see you in the room and also online, and as you've seen from the video, 2024 was what I would call a colorful year, and you've seen on the video some new products, the Flexrotor drone, the Racer fast helicopter, the XLR that is now in service. A lot of new products, but it's also a video about people and about purpose. I'm sure most of you will now be familiar with the details of our full year results, so I'll keep my opening remarks brief and leave time for your questions. In 2024, we experienced strong order intake across all businesses, with a book-to-bill well above one, confirming the demand for products and services. In Commercial Aircraft, we prioritized activities and allocated our resources accordingly.
We are upskilling our teams, collaborating with our partners and suppliers, while remaining laser-focused on quality and safety. We are progressing in an environment that remains complex and that is, as you can see yourself, very fast-changing around us. Our Helicopter Division saw a robust order intake alongside growth in services, confirming our leadership position in this market. In Defence and Space, we took further steps to transform the business and the organization, and we completed the extensive technical reviews of our space programs. Overall, we achieved our 2024 guidance and delivered a solid set of underlying financial results reflecting the commercial aircraft deliveries and a solid performance, which I should call a good performance by helicopters. The air power business in Defence and Space delivered strong results as well. There were over €1 billion of charges linked to the space business, which I'll come on to later.
These financial results and the level of confidence we have in our future performance support our proposal for an increased dividend of EUR 2 per share, along with a special dividend of EUR 1 a share to the AGM on the 15th of April later this year, and we'll, of course, give you more details on the financials later, so now, let's look more closely at our commercial aircraft business. We disclosed our full year orders and deliveries last month already, so I'll go quickly over the numbers. In Q4, we delivered 269 commercial aircraft, which took our full year 2024 deliveries to 766 units, a year-on-year increase of plus 4%. We booked 878 gross orders, confirming the strong appetite for products in the market. Our order backlog stood at a record 8,658 aircrafts at the end of last year.
Our A320 Family is in a leading position, with a backlog now standing at 7,210 aircraft, thanks to the 637 gross orders we booked in 2024. We delivered 602 A320 Family aircraft in 2024, including the first A321 XLR variant in October. On the 220, we delivered 75 aircraft. Moving to wide bodies, the A330 and the A350, we received 224 gross orders in 2024 and delivered 89 aircraft. These included several firsts to new and long-time customers, such as the first A350 delivery to Emirates, which I believe is pictured here on the screen behind me. As I mentioned earlier, in 2024, we prioritized our activities to support the ramp-up of our commercial aircraft production.
In 2025, the ramp-up will continue to take place in an environment, in particular a supply environment that remains complex and fast-changing, with persisting supply chain issues and on specific items, in particular for the beginning of this year with CFM engines, and we will already see that coming through in the first quarter deliveries. Now, if we look at the specific ramp-up for each program, on the A320 family, we continue to ramp up towards a rate of 75 aircraft per month in 2027, so no change. On the A330, we are now stabilizing production at a rate of around four aircraft per month, which is what we had targeted and said earlier. Specific supply chain challenges, notably with Spirit AeroSystems, are currently putting pressure on the ramp-up of the A350 and the A220.
In that context, on the A350, we continue to target rate 12 in 2028, and we are adjusting the entry into service of the A350 Freighter variant, which is now expected in the second half of 2027, so that's a delayed entry into service. On the A220, we continue to target a monthly production rate of 14 aircraft, reaching 14 aircraft a month in 2026, so that's now next year. Helicopters, well, actually, 2024 was an exceptional year for our helicopters. We booked 450 net orders compared to 393 in 2023. And that comes with a book-to-bill above one in units and in value. That is highlighting the strong demand for our platforms. We saw notably growth in light single engine, light twin engine, and heavy helicopters, as well as in services, so across the board.
I'm happy to say that the year was a particularly strong one for the H225, which is having a lot of success both on the civil and military markets. In Q4, we notably signed a contract with the Dutch Ministry of Defense for 12 H225Ms. We continue to see positive momentum in both the civil and military markets, and the 114 orders booked for the H145 light twin engine helicopter are also a great example of that. We remain focused on securing new business opportunities in both our home countries and on the export market. I'd also like to highlight the great achievement of our Racer high-speed helicopter demonstrator, developed through the European Clean Sky 2 research program. The demonstrator exceeded its initial speed objective by reaching 420 kilometers per hour, which is 227 knots, after just seven flights. So very quick opening of the flight envelope.
There might be more to come on this. As we say, stay tuned. Defence and Space, in a beautiful picture, 2024 was a new record year of order intake for Defence and Space. Another indication that the solutions developed across the division's portfolio are in strong demand. We recorded a book-to-bill of around 1.4 in value, which we secured while being more selective on our biddings and more prudent on the risk profile of our contracts. This year was particularly strong on the Eurofighter, with 25 aircraft ordered by Spain, as well as an order by Italy for up to an additional 24. On A400M, we delivered seven aircraft in 2024, including the first for Kazakhstan. 17 retrofitted aircraft were handed over to their customers.
A major achievement was also the signing of a contract amendment with the program launch customers to include additional capabilities and close the development path for the remaining ones. In 2024, we booked a net charge of EUR 121 million related to the A400M. This mainly reflects updated assumptions regarding the new contract amendment I just mentioned before, as well as risks regarding the production plan. In light of uncertainties regarding the level of aircraft orders, we continue to assess the potential impact on the program's manufacturing activities. On space, we have worked in 2024 to fix the foundations of the business, and we are now focusing on improving its performance through a dedicated turnaround plan specific to space. Additionally, as we discussed before, we continue to explore strategic options for the future of our space business.
In that sense, we have started exploratory discussions with Leonardo and Thales in order to assess different scenarios to consolidate and strengthen the European space sector and add value to the main stakeholders of this industry. These discussions are preliminary and non-binding at this stage. And now I'd like to hand over to Thomas for a look at the financials.
Yes, thank you very much, Guillaume. And of course, hello to everybody here in the room and to those following online. I will now take you through the key elements of our 2024 financials, starting with the top line. In 2024, we generate revenues of EUR 69.2 billion, which is up 6% compared to 2023. And this mainly reflects the number of deliveries of commercial aircraft and helicopters, and also a higher volume in our air power business. Our full year EBIT Adjusted decreased to EUR 5.4 billion, coming from EUR 5.8 billion in 2023. Now, remember, 2023, we benefited from the progress made on our compliance topics, which allowed us to release at the time provisions for an amount of EUR 0.1 billion in commercial aircraft.
While in 2024, the positive contribution from the higher commercial aircraft deliveries was partially reduced by investments to prepare the future, as well as a slightly less favorable hedge rate. And the underlying performance was also supported by a very solid performance in our helicopters division. Now, in Q4, and as planned, we completed the in-depth technical review of our space programs, notably with one major program that remained to be fully assessed. And this resulted in an incremental charge of EUR 0.3 billion in Q4, mainly from the update of key assumptions. And that brings the total impact for the full year to EUR 1.3 billion, which obviously then is the major driver of the decrease in our EBIT Adjusted in 2024 compared to 2023.
What I would also say is that we are progressing in the discussions with our social partners with regards to the Defence and Space reorganization and workforce adaptation. And a restructuring provision is expected to be booked once the necessary conditions are fulfilled, and the amount that we are expecting is around EUR 0.2 billion. Now, with that, let's look at the results by business. In commercial aircraft, the EBIT Adjusted increased to EUR 5.1 billion, coming from EUR 4.8 billion in 2023, with the increase in deliveries being partially offset by investments for preparing the future, including the level of excess workforce in place as we continue to embark on the production ramp-up.
The EBIT Adjusted of Airbus Helicopters was EUR 818 million, which is an increase of around 11% year- over- year, with a profit margin of 10.3% in line with our ambition for a sustained profitability while maintaining our commitment to sound execution and continuous improvement, and the EBIT Adjusted in our defense and space division was a negative EUR 566 million. Remember, in 2023, it was a positive EUR 229 million, and that reflects the total charges of EUR 1.3 billion, which we had to take in our space programs, including the EUR 0.3 billion charge which we took in Q4, resulting, as I said, from the completion of the in-depth technical review that Guillaume already mentioned.
And now turning to our consolidated EBIT reported, this was EUR 5.3 billion, with adjustments totaling a negative EUR 550 million, and included in that was a positive impact of plus EUR 101 million from the dollar working capital mismatch and balance sheet revaluation. And so the overall resulting net income for 2024 is EUR 4.2 billion, and that means earnings per share of EUR 5.36. Let's have a quick look at our free cash flow before customer financing. We came in at plus EUR 4.5 billion in the financial year 2024, and this mainly reflects the level of deliveries, as well as the good commercial momentum across all our businesses, and that resulted again in healthy pre-delivery payment inflows, while the planned inventory build-up reflects, of course, the ramp-up that we have ahead of us in all the programs.
Our net cash position stood at EUR 11.8 billion as of the end of December, also supported by the strengthening of the dollar towards the year-end towards the euro, and our total liquidity stands at EUR 35 billion. And now with that, I would like to hand it back to Guillaume for some look at some achievements in innovation and sustainability.
Thank you, Thomas. S o to avoid any ambiguities, our ambition to decarbonize aviation and our corresponding roadmaps remain a key priority for Airbus. We continued to innovate and make further progress on our decarbonization roadmap in 2024, working on all the levers to deliver on our industry's trajectory towards net zero emissions. We expanded our effort to drive SAF sustainable aviation fuel development, becoming an investment partner in LanzaJet to support alcohol-to-jet SAF technology and to accelerate the deployment and use of SAF in commercial aviation through a dedicated investment fund. We worked with airline customers to carry out and learn from SAF blend operations on key business and holiday routes, and partnered with new fuel producers to share knowledge and technologies. Looking at our own operations at Airbus, in 2024, we used 18% SAF in our aircraft and helicopters flights.
This means we are on track so far towards our goal to use at least 30% SAF in our operations by 2030. Of the 766 commercial aircraft delivered in 2024, 75% were delivered to their customers with SAF blend. Last year, we saw the successful test campaign of our EcoPulse hybrid- electric propulsion demonstrator, which you can see on the screen, co-developed with Safran and Daher. This project allowed us to match your key technologies such as high-voltage batteries and energy management for electric and hybrid- electric architectures, which will play a key role in the next generation of aircraft and helicopters. When it comes to hydrogen, our ZEROe project remains central to the plan for a decarbonized future in sector. It remains central to the plan. So in short, yes, we are adapting our ZEROe roadmap, but no, we are not moving away from hydrogen.
Over the last five years, we have worked to mature the technologies that could enable a hydrogen-powered aircraft. We've also closely studied and, where possible, acted to foster the development of the hydrogen ecosystem that is necessary for such an aircraft to operate commercially. What we have now assessed is that this hydrogen economy is at least five years, maybe five to ten years late, compared to the assumptions from 2020 when we accelerated on the technology. Furthermore, to fly, we need a regulatory framework that supports hydrogen too, and that is not yet there. In parallel, from an aircraft standpoint, we've made a lot of progress in our understanding of the various technical pathways, and we have now concluded that a fully electric aircraft design powered by the hydrogen fuel cell propulsion system, same as what you can see on the screen, which was unveiled in 2022.
So we came to the conclusion that an aircraft powered by hydrogen fuel cell propulsion system is the most promising pathway to enable a commercially viable hydrogen plane. So from now on, we will focus our research efforts in that direction, and we will refine this roadmap in the coming years based on the readiness level of the enabling technologies. In short, our commitment to hydrogen-powered aviation remains unchanged. In fact, we confirm that we believe in hydrogen technology and that hydrogen technology can lead to a plane that flies, that's confirmed. Hydrogen has the potential to play a crucial role in decarbonizing aviation in the long term and to bring a revolution in air transport comparable to that of electric vehicles in the automotive sector. It's probably also as complex and challenging as a transition as it is in the automotive sector.
Before 2050, however, the vast majority of the sector's decarbonization efforts will rely on other levers, notably SAF and more efficient conventional aircraft design, areas in which, as you know, we are playing as well a leading role. We will share more about these pioneering topics during the Airbus Summit on March 24th and 25th. Now, let's have a look at our outlook and priorities this year and beyond. I'll start with our guidance, which I will read out to you now. As the basis for its 2025 guidance, the company assumes no additional disruptions to global trade of the world economy, air traffic, the supply chain, the company's internal operations, and its ability to deliver products and services. The guidance excludes the impact of potential new tariffs on the company's business.
The company's 2025 guidance includes the impact of the integration of certain Spirit AeroSystems work packages on its EBIT Adjusted and free cash flow before customer financing, based on preliminary estimates and the closing assumption as of 1st of July this year. On that basis, the company targets to achieve in 2025 around 820 commercial aircraft deliveries, an EBIT Adjusted of around EUR 7 billion, and a free cash flow before customer financing of around EUR 4.5 billion. The guidance includes the following preliminary assumption for the integration of certain Spirit AeroSystems work packages: a broadly neutral impact on EBIT Adjusted, a mid-triple digit negative impact on free cash flow before customer financing, but a broadly neutral impact on net cash, as the compensation to be received from Spirit AeroSystems will broadly offset the free cash flow negative impact. So, apart from the numbers, what are the priorities for 2025?
We are committed to serving our customers while maintaining our strong commercial position across all businesses. Doing so, we will continue to focus on the commercial aircraft ramp-up and the transformation of our defense and space business. When it comes to the ramp-up, our customers are relying on our ability to deliver on time and on quality. We will continue to shape our industrial system, notably with the integration of Spirit AeroSystems work packages, and to manage an interdependent supply chain with anticipation and agility, given the context. These priorities are enabling our profitable growth and our ambition to lead the development of a sustainable aerospace. As we progress, we will remain focused on the five pillars that underpin everything we do as a company: safety, quality, integrity, compliance, and security.
I am reminded that today is the ICAO's International Day commemorating air crash victims and their families, a day that should remind us all in the industry that safety is at the heart of everything we do. And with that, I think it's the time for me to hand over back to you, Julie.
Thank you, Guillaume, and thank you, Thomas. So, ladies and gentlemen, we are now about to begin our Q&A session. Of course, those of you following us remotely can pose your questions, submit your questions on the live eTool. And as the entire press conference is conducted in English with no simultaneous translations, we would also ask that you pose your questions in English, please. So, for those of you who are with us in the room today, please raise your hand and wait until one of our communications colleagues comes to you with a microphone. Please don't forget to state your name and your publication before you ask your question. And to help us give you appropriate answers, please speak clearly and slowly. And then for the media colleagues online, I said it, you can use the live eTool, submitting your questions in writing in English, please.
And of course, in case you experience any technical difficulties, please reach out to the email address which was provided to you earlier this week, along with all the necessary technical details, and we'll try and help you out. So, we'll begin the Q&A session now. We'll try to take as many questions as we can, and we'll prioritize questions, of course, from the physical audience who have joined us here in Toulouse. So now, dear colleagues from the media, the floor is yours.
Good morning. It's Michael Gubisch from Cirium. A few questions regarding the A350 and A220 ramp-up. You say that the Spirit integration or Spirit AeroSystems integration, that will have an impact on the service entry of the freighter, of the A350 Freighter, but it will not have an impact on your target of 12 A350s in 2028 and 14 A220s in next year. Can you explain that a bit more, why it impacts the freighter development but not the ramp-up?
Yes. So actually, there must be a misunderstanding. The Spirit AeroSystems situation is impacting the ramp-up short-term of both the packs and the freighter. The freighter is impacted by not only Spirit AeroSystems, but a few other things. Now, in spite of the short-term challenges that we see on Spirit AeroSystems Section 15 of the A350, that is more impacting the new freighter because there's development work on top of the production work. In spite of this, we maintain the target to be at rate 12 by 2028, which means that we will have to recover or to accelerate on the back end of that period of time. The rest is moving forward. So the ramp-up overall of the A350 is happening, but when you are limited by one bottleneck, you can't be delivering on short-term, and that's what we have with Spirit.
So it's impacting both the packs and the freighter, but obviously more the freighter because we have development efforts as well.
Olga Nedbaeva from [crosstalk] AFP.
Yes, we can hear you.
What are the prospects for your A400M program? Is there a risk of stopping production in 2028? Thank you.
The question is on the A400M. We have, by end of 2024, 48 aircraft in the backlog to be delivered. We have a clear path for the next three years, allocated aircraft by slots, so we have visibility on the short- term. We are also engaged in export campaigns that take a bit more time to materialize than what we would like to, but we are working on those export campaigns. That's the short-term and mid-term outlook. We need to gain more visibility beyond the three-term horizon on the number and the nature of the orders as we want to continue to produce the product. The A400M is an aircraft, a military aircraft for tactical and strategic transport that has a lot of meaning in the current security context.
We are, together with our home nations, eager to maintain the production of the aircraft on the long term, but we need more clarity and visibility beyond the short-term horizon. That's the outlook for A400M. There are export prospects with whom we are at the moment speaking and working, so with positive prospects for the product also on the export side, not only with the home countries.
Hello. Can you hear? Yeah. Good morning. Thank you for this press conference. I'm Liz Alderman with The New York Times. I wanted to ask you, you mentioned that the guidance issued today excludes the impact of potential tariffs on the company business. Nonetheless, all companies are preparing for this possibility, and we've already seen American tariffs being imposed on Canada and Mexico, places where you do have production. Could you just speak a little bit about how the company would be preparing for that? And indeed, if production does wind up becoming more expensive generally, how would that impact your customers?
And along those lines also, given that the United States President has tended to target, as we can say, companies or countries on an individual basis, I wondered if his remarks last night indicating that he would not buy an Airbus airplane as an Air Force One airplane gives any pause for concern that he might be thinking of Airbus as really a European company, despite the fact that you all have major production in the United States? And if I may, a second question on the state of defense. Given the United States' rapid retreat, possibly from a security role in Europe, what do you see as the state of readiness of the European defense industry to step in quickly and Airbus' role in that? Thank you.
Yeah, thanks for the questions. So there is a lot of uncertainty on the tariffs, the what, the when, the nature, what they would impact, for how long. And like other companies, we are in front of those uncertainties, reviewing scenarios, looking at our ability to adapt. And that's something that we look at very seriously at the moment. However, we wanted to give a guidance at this point in time to share what we think we can execute on this year's absent tariffs, which means tariffs when and if they come, and depending on their nature, we would have to adapt. We have actually a lot of ways to adapt. First, we believe we should not be directly impacted by tariffs. Indeed, we are buying a lot from the U.S. We are selling to the U.S. We manufacture, we assemble, we develop in the U.S. like few other companies.
We are the first export customer of the U.S. aerospace industry, so it's really an integrated ecosystem across the North Atlantic, I would say. We believe tariffs in this industry would be lose-lose, but we have as well a very strong demand outside of the U.S., a lot of production capabilities in Europe, outside of Europe, that we could use to serve export customers. We are very closely monitoring with our U.S. airlines customers what this would mean for them, and obviously, there would be an increase of cost and most probably price to the airlines and therefore to the end customers in the U.S. So that's the backdrop of the potential tariffs.
Again, I don't believe that would serve this industry, including for the U.S., that what makes me quite optimistic that we would not be directly impacted, but we are, like many others, in a bit of a wait-and-see mode. When it comes to defense, again, another area of fast-changing environment with a lot of uncertainties. It's not only to comment on the E.U. defense readiness against this or that potential conflict. What I can say is that we're serving our customers. We are a very important player in defense for Europe in aerospace, in aviation, in space. We have a lot of products that we deliver ourselves or through cooperation partnerships that we have, and we'll continue to do this.
And the questions we had on the A400M or Eurofighter or other products are obviously against the backdrop of this security environment and the need for Europe to up its game with probably more spend, better investments, probably more cooperation and consolidation. And we believe it's the nature of Airbus to bring good answers, competitive answers to cooperation programs in aviation and space. So we stand ready to help, to support. That's what we are doing already in this very context.
Thank you. Next question, please. Yeah.
Hi, Benedikt Kammel from Bloomberg over here. I had a follow-up question on the A400M over here.
Sorry.
No problem. Follow-up question on the A400M. At what point do you need to actually make a decision on the future of production? Is it this year? Is it next year? When will we get the point where you have to say, "We can continue or we need to stop"? Then a question on consolidation. You mentioned you're exploring space assets, but there's also in the defense arena, there are two programs on the next fighter jet. And I was wondering, we've heard some comments from BAE this week that they would be interested in potentially closer collaboration. What's your view at this point? Do we need to take, given the geopolitical world we live in, do we need to take another hard look at these two programs, whether there's a way to consolidate, and what kind of role could you play in that? And then a final quick question.
We've had an unusual spate of aircraft accidents in the last couple of weeks, and obviously, there's no pattern emerging here, but are you concerned in any way, given the budget cuts that we see in the U.S. in areas like FAA and so on, possibly NTSB, are you concerned that longer term the safety of flying might be at risk here?
Thanks. A lot of important questions. A400M, I think your question is very similar to the one that we had at the beginning. So I should repeat, we have 48 orders in the backlog. The defense budgets are under pressure, but there's also the intent to do more in defense. So we have contradictions here in nature. It's a great aircraft. I mean, the French Air Force recently made super positive comments about the product and the use. And we have clarity for the next three years. So we are not at the point of making any decision, but obviously, we have to look at the different scenarios moving forward against the backdrop of more time needed for export customers and these uncertainties on defense budgets, the reviews that we have here and there.
So not at the point of making any decision, but looking at the different scenarios and sharing with our home countries what the evolution would mean for them moving forward. To be clear, the A400M program anyway is moving forward. I mean, we are currently, if I look at the Tiger, with a major upgrade program, a lot of development for a program with some years ago went to the end of production. We have another program, which is the NH90. We are also investing in upgrades and new variants. It's a program that is with a lot of orders. So we have different situations in defense, and I'm looking at it in a rather cold way, but with a plan with a capacity that we hear is very important for defense. If I want to be a bit faster, yes.
On the fighter jets, I shared my view as well. I mean, all along the development of the FCAS, that we need scale in those programs. FCAS is a way to gain scale between France, Germany, Spain. We are moving forward in the phase I-B. There will be going to the phase II again, negotiation and discussions between the partner countries on what they want to prioritize, where they see the main and the most important capabilities, what we have learned from phase I-B. GCAP, and with a major role of BAE Systems, is indeed moving forward as well as a fighter jet. I believe there are a lot of complementarities that could be synergized, and I agree with the view expressed by BAE Systems that there is room to bring the programs closer.
This has to happen under the leadership of countries because those programs are funded by states. Those programs crystallize their appetite for collaboration on critical defense capabilities, so it has to be under their leadership, but we are prepared at Airbus to contribute in a larger way to common investments, common capabilities, and bringing the programs closer. Could we merge the two programs? I think that's probably absolutely not on the agenda short-term. There's so much to be done anyway that I don't think that's the point, but bringing capabilities together is probably something we could do, so scale is important here as well, as I mentioned in the previous call, and safety. Safety is always a concern. Safety, I mean, we target zero accident. That's the only acceptable target, and we've made so much progress on the way that now each and every accident is an unacceptable event.
That's something that at Airbus we take extremely seriously through what we call a safety beyond standard initiative. Julie, you said some of the people in the room have visited the Safety Promotion Center yesterday. We try to go much beyond the product, much beyond the aircraft, but to the operations, and we like to play a role in the safety of the aviation system. Indeed, when there are significant changes or unstable situations, these are additional risks that need to be addressed, and we want to make sure aviation remains safe. Today is the safest way to travel on the planet, but we want to continue to improve the safety of this industry.
Good morning. Good morning. This is Hakan Çelik from Istanbul, CNN Türk, and Posta. My question, how do you see the future and technological preparations of single pilot operations in cockpit? If you believe that the industry is close to the final stage, are the main concerns and the questions due to the regulations and the objections of pilots and associations or psychological barriers? Thank you so much.
I'd like to repeat in my role of CEO of this company that the priority is on safety, that automation, greater automation is the first driver of improvement in safety that has benefited a lot in the past, and we want to continue to bring more automation to the cockpits and more capabilities to the planes. We are not obsessed with going single pilot operations. That's not what we are pursuing. We are pursuing more safety for the airplane, for the passengers, for the cockpit, and for the crews themselves. The idea of single pilot operation is a challenging one because actually when you go single pilot operation means you have to go zero pilots because you have to factor in the potential incapacitation of a single pilot. That's probably far out.
There are voices raising the idea of going potentially single pilot because the shortages of pilots is also something that is of a concern. So that could be on a more longer term a solution to that question, but it's not the case short-term. So the single pilot operation is a concept that needs to be studied, but at Airbus, what we are pursuing is greater safety by more automation, and there are plenty of opportunities today with sensors, with data, with AI moving forward to bring additional safety through automation. That's what we're really pursuing.
Thank you, Guillaume. So we take one more from the floor, and then we're going to go online. Olivier?
Olivier James de L'Usine Nouvelle. Are deliveries of LEAP engines still a bottleneck? Are you going to ask CFM once again to prioritize Airbus over airlines in the coming months? And second question, is the financial situation of your suppliers improving this year?
So we need engines to assemble and test and deliver aircraft. That's today for the single- aisle a bottleneck of the industry for aircraft manufacturers and for customers. And there is a tension or there is a contradiction that our customers both want their existing aircraft to be well supported, and they're right to ask for this, but they also ask for their aircraft manufacturer suppliers, Airbus, to deliver on time. And then we face the situation of missing hardware, especially with what happened to CFM, the unfortunate events they had in the last six months to put them in a difficult situation. Last year, we thought, I mean, we wanted to clarify and get the support of CFM for a certain level of deliveries to honor our commitments. That was the result.
The support we got from CFM was a result of a discussion over a six to nine months period of allocation of parts and spare engines, and we agreed with them that this beginning of the year would be with a lot of support to our customers given the seasonality of the different parts of the industry. short-term, we are with shortages of CFM engines that should normalize over the course of the first half of the year, but we know that this will impact us for the beginning of the year when it comes to engines. That's why we have, unfortunately, some gliders. We don't like to do this, but we have few gliders in Hamburg because of CFM missing engines, and that's the backdrop of where we are today.
So that's a difficult balance to be decided against the backdrop of missing hardware in one way or the other in the industry, hoping that this would normalize, as I said, in the course of this year as they recover from their mishaps.
Thank you, Guillaume. So as I said, we're going to go online. We have a question from Chris Jasper at the Daily Telegraph, who I think this one's for you, Thomas. When do you aim to close the Spirit transaction? Sometime this spring or before June. I understand that Spirit is undertaking the various negotiations for non-core parts of the business, but can you provide an update on a possible deal for Prestwick and also an indication of where the non-core parts of the Belfast site stand?
Yes, thank you very much for the question. So just a quick reminder on where do we stand with Spirit. You know that we have signed a binding term sheet in the summer of last year. And so the next step obviously is to come to a signing of the transaction. We're making good progress. So therefore, it's always very difficult to make exact predictions, but I think it would be realistic to expect that this will happen in the next weeks so that we have then also a signing of the transaction. The closing, as you know, always depends on the number of preconditions that are not fully under our control. But you have seen maybe in our guidance that the assumption that we have taken is that a closing might take place by the middle of this year, so July 1st.
I would say this is a realistic assumption, but obviously, reality is not fully in our control and so therefore might slightly deviate from that. But again, I would say it's realistic. With respect to the scope, there was a question on Prestwick here. So Prestwick is not in the direct scope that we were targeting. However, Prestwick is a site that is to the vast majority working for Airbus, and Spirit AeroSystems has a put option to sell it to us that we have pre-agreed. So they have the possibility to sell it to somebody else, keep it, or give it to Airbus. We stand ready to fulfill that commitment, of course. And then last but not least, the non-core parts of the Belfast site. Our view is we have a clear commitment and a clear understanding to take over the work packages that relate to Airbus.
Of course, it is important that also the other parts of the site either stay with Spirit or come into good hands. And of course, we're trying to support this as much as we can and play a very constructive role to support that process.
Thank you, Thomas. So we take another question from online. It's Véronique Guillermard from Le Figaro. Guillaume, could you give us some color on your decarbonization roadmap and specify where the hydrogen plane project is? And are you going to shift it? What are the reasons and what will be the consequences for the teams working on the hydrogen aircraft?
Yeah, so Véronique, I think I addressed this point. I will clarify again. So hydrogen is and remains front and center of the strategy. We have completed a lot of work, research, development, tests in the last five years. We come to the conclusion that the fuel cell powered hydrogen plane is the most promising solution. We observe that the hydrogen ecosystem takes more time to take shape and to grow than what we thought when we launched the project in 2019- 2020. So we'll continue to work on those hydrogen technologies, focusing on the techno bricks that will support the entry into service of a commercially viable hydrogen plane later than 2035. We focus on the technologies that will help bringing a commercially competitive hydrogen fuel cell- powered aircraft in due time.
That will very much depend on the progress made as well on the regulatory front to get a regulatory framework for hydrogen and hydrogen planes and on the development of the decarbonized hydrogen ecosystem in a sufficient number of places of the world where we want to see this plane operated. So, answer to your question, we keep working on hydrogen. We refocus on the technologies that will make the difference when it comes to fuel cell technologies. We reduce the size of the teams and specialize on those topics I mentioned before. We continue to work on the ecosystem, understanding the evolution of the ecosystem and helping here and there, and that's beyond what we do on the next generation of conventional aircraft, reducing the fuel burn and working on sustainable aviation fuel.
I don't repeat all the roadmap, the decarbonization roadmap of Airbus, but try to address your specific question on hydrogen. We continue to work on hydrogen. We focus on what will make the difference. We're happy to see that we come to the conclusion that the hydrogen plane is feasible, technically feasible, but we need also to make sure that there is commercial viability, and it is the part that takes more time than what we thought initially or what we hoped initially.
Thank you. We'll take one last question from online, and then we go back to the room. So the next question is from Sylvia Pfeifer from the Financial Times. On space, have you, Thales, and Leonardo already approached regulators about your possible plans? If not, when is that likely to happen? Given the pressures on Europe to consolidate on defense and space, are you expecting a green light this time given previous attempts were not so welcome?
On the topic of the consolidation, I would say, of course, we are discussing at a high- level the plan that we have, and I think we're getting first indications of positive feedback on this. But that does, of course, not take away the necessity to then go through a much more complicated antitrust process, which we expect will take long. However, we agree with what is insinuated in the question that in light of the competitive landscape that has completely changed, there is a clear case for Europe to step up on defense and space, and specifically space, because our view is that the market for space that we should be looking at as Europeans is the global market, and it is important that Europe is competitive not only within Europe, but is competitive on a global scale.
Therefore, our view is that the project that we're looking at here will be beneficial for all stakeholders in Europe, and therefore we do think that it is the right moment in time to advance the discussions, and we're confident that we will make progress also on the regulatory side.
Thank you, Thomas. So we take one in the room here.
Look, good morning. Mara Monti from Il Sole 24 Ore. Sorry, I'm talking again about the discussion that you have with Leonardo regarding the space sector. Do you have any idea of the amount of the investment to create this global company in the satellite sector? And how could work? How do you see this global company? And a second question, do you see other sectors where cooperation with the Italian company is possible, or doing more, for example, in the defense sector? Thank you.
Yes, so thank you for the question. Actually, today, you have three players that are speaking together, which are Leonardo, Thales, and Airbus, who are already investing in their space activities. But we are today at a level that we consider subscale compared to especially what's happening in the U.S., where there is much more money invested with very large players. And therefore, we are of the opinion that bringing those activities together will allow us to better invest, to combine investment, and to be much more competitive and fast in the satellite business. So the company would be formed of the assets of those companies, the existing assets. That's one of the scenarios we are looking at.
That would be a company where the different existing players would have a stake, and that would give to the company a financial power and ability to invest and a scale to operate that would be much more likely and much more positive to compete against the players that are disrupting the ecosystem. Do we have other sectors where scale matters? Yes, a lot. Maybe we could have said with Thomas that the conclusions of the Draghi report when it comes to the defense chapter or the space chapter are very much endorsed by Airbus. Therefore, we believe that there is a very strong case for more consolidation of the demand and the supply in defense in Europe.
And we at Airbus are very much willing to cooperate with Leonardo when it comes to these potential cooperations because Leonardo is for us already a very close and reliable partner on ATR if we take what's happening in Toulouse, but also in Eurofighter, in MBDA for the missiles, in NH90 for the helicopters. So that's a partner we are working with and collaborating with very efficiently. So yes, there are other cases for creating scale in Europe. And to the question that Thomas answered before on antitrust support from Brussels, we really hope that the antitrust authorities of Europe will look at it in a different way compared to the past because we're really at a critical moment where we need to operate at scale, and that comes with creating consolidations that could look like a bit monopolistic in Europe.
But when you look at the world, it's still small players compared to the giants we see in the U.S. and in China, the emerging giants against which Europe has to be prepared to compete or to cooperate and compete. And we want to contribute to those consolidations. That's a bit in the DNA of Airbus.
Thank you, Guillaume.
I have one short question to Thomas, and then one from Guillaume regarding hydrogen. Bjorn Fehrm from Leeham News. The compensation from Spirit that keeps you EBIT and cash flow neutral, I think you said was $559 million. How do you get that from a company which is basically bankrupt? And then to Guillaume, the fuel cell direction that you now have chosen means that you are targeting a turboprop aircraft. And given that the limitation of that propulsion system is about 100 seats, it means that you then have to either be a competitor or a cooperation partner with ATR.
Yeah, so let me maybe take the first question. You're completely right with the number that you cited. So we're receiving or in the binding term sheet that we have signed, we have agreed on a compensation of $559 million for the takeover of the Spirit work packages in light of the fact that these work packages are loss-making. And therefore, it is a compensation for essentially the turnaround plan that we have ahead of us to turn around the operations at Spirit in order to make sure that Spirit as a supplier can support the ramp-up that we have ahead of us for the A350 and the A220. How is that going to work? Essentially, it all hinges on the fact that it will be a concurrent closing between our transaction with Spirit AeroSystems, but of course, also the Boeing takeover of the rest of the company.
That then, I think, is the key to your question in a joint closing process that will make sure that also the compensation will be backed up and can be paid to Airbus at that point in time.
So on the fuel cell, it's a completely new propulsion system. There's no engine maker that would provide the complete system. So we are working with different companies for the propeller because indeed there will be a large propeller for the electric engine, for the power electronics, for the stack of the fuel cell to create the cooling system because there's a lot of energy to be dissipated through a fuel cell. But also, we are working with partners and we are working ourselves on the fuel storage on board. So the tank is a completely different tank because we are with cryogenic technologies on board for the distribution.
So yes, we are working with a large set of partners in the fuel cell approach, probably more in numbers than what we would be doing with hydrogen combustion, where the majority would come with one engine very much looking like existing engines. But that's the nature of the fuel cell. So I missed. Please take the mic. I don't hear you.
The question was another. That produces 100 seat turboprop, which is the ATR domain of operation. Are you then going to compete with ATR or cooperate with ATR?
Okay, so I missed your question indeed. So we're doing another loop of development of the technologies. I told you that we want to target a commercially viable product, and the positioning of the product might be a bit different from what we have considered so far. That will be one of the outcomes of the next loop of development of the technology. And ATR is a company where we have 50% shareholding. We're working with Leonardo where we have good cooperation. So whatever we do, we would do it in good terms with ATR and Leonardo, but it's not a turboprop technology. It's not a turboprop. It's a fuel cell. Even if there is a propeller, it's not a turboprop, as you know. So the answer is we don't know.
When it comes to a smaller plane, it could be through cooperation with ATR or in good terms with ATR. I'm not suggesting today anymore that it would be on the low end of the spectrum. It could be somewhere else. We're doing another loop of development of the technologies, and we will look at where in terms of number of passengers, in terms of size of the plane, in terms of range, where that would make sense to be a commercially viable plane in the fuel ecosystem of the then 2035, 2040s, and beyond. A nd for more, we can continue to discuss. I know you love those questions.
Yes, hello, Niklas Záboji over Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. I have two follow-up questions on the consolidation talks with Thales and Leonardo first. To what extent are you only talking about space or already about consolidating defense activities with those two companies? And second, can you confirm that the objective is to close the negotiations by summer or when? Thank you.
So first, I can confirm that the discussions are ongoing with Thales and Leonardo. They are specific to satellites and satellite services, specific to satellite and satellite services. We call them space, but we are not speaking about launchers or other parts of space, and they don't go beyond the satellite discussions. And while we're in early discussion, we're in exploratory talks. We don't have yet a timeline, a timeframe, a specific date for whatever. We're still investigating different possibilities and making sure that the setup we would select is something that would work, that could go through antitrust, that would be successful on the market. So that's what I call exploratory talks or discussions with Thales and Leonardo.
Gregor Waschinski with Handelsblatt. I have a question on COMAC. COMAC is ramping up production and has recently displayed the ambition to expand the use of the C919 beyond China in 2026 and also later maybe go to Europe. What does this mean for Airbus?
It means a new competitor in the single-aisle business and going from a duopoly to a potential triopoly. Other aircraft manufacturers have tried to enter into this very competitive space in the past from other countries, not necessarily successfully, but I believe COMAC is more likely to succeed as they will first serve a Chinese market of at least 20% of the world market where they have a privileged access. And that will give them probably the room to then go to export markets for them, so non-Chinese markets, when the product is mature and when they think they are prepared for that. They have to do a certain ramp-up first. In the current supply environment, ramp-up is not an easy task, but we take them seriously. We consider this is one more competitor in this space. So that's the way we look at COMAC.
Thank you. Take one here and then over.
Good morning, Sebastian Steinke from FLUG REVUE in Germany. I have a question concerning the future plans for the 320 follow-on family, please. You mentioned already or envisioned it might be possible to have this program entry into service by 2035, and looking at all the hiccups with the supply chain, I wondered what is your production system planned for the new family. Would this typically be similar to the modular approach we have today, or looking at robot lines with very high capacity, would you tend to maybe focus on less production sites that produce with higher rate in the future? Thank you.
You're asking questions about the successor to the A320 family, which we are indeed heavily involved in at Airbus with partners, in particular with CFM, with the RISE engine, as we have a close cooperation with CFM on the evaluation of these technologies. I have said earlier that we are looking for an entry into service in the second half of the next decade and a likely launch of the program by the end of this decade. We have not indicated anything on the supply chain architecture, strategy, anything on the sites and the production because we are in the phase of reviewing the options. It will very much depend on the architecture, on the choice of partners as well. That's obviously something that will be really important.
As you can imagine, we have intense discussions with our home countries on the competitiveness of labor, of investment, of the regulatory framework in Europe when it comes to looking at where this production system will be located. We are insisting very much that the European ecosystem has to be competitive at the time we make decisions if we want to have a significant share of the production system in Europe. That's something that is concerning me a bit, to be clear and to be honest. Still, we have a lot of skills, competencies that are core to our success in our existing sites. The preference would be to continue to extend based on the current footprint. We have to make sure that the current footprint backdrop is or remains or will be competitive moving forward for the next decade.
Wolfgang Borgmann, German Innovation Magazine, Aero International. I have again a question about the fuel cell, if you allow.
Of course. I love this topic.
It's about the research teams that you have. You have a high number of people working in Hamburg, in Ottobrunn on the fuel cell development. Also, the DLR is working heavily in Hamburg on the hydrogen part of the eco-environment of the fuel cell and hydrogen use. Would that be continued at the same pace that you end up maybe in one or two years at a market-ready product, or will it be more extended until you pick up again the topic? And what will it mean to your teams? Will they stay the same size, be reduced, or where will their direction go?
Yeah, so it will take more time as we take stock of what we have learned through the past five years where we spend a lot of money, a lot of effort, ourselves, partners. We come to the conclusion that we will have this year the technologies at technology readiness level three to confirm the feasibility of an aircraft, but also to confirm that the commercial viability based on those technologies in the supply environment of hydrogen, SAF or kerosene that would not lead to a competitive aircraft. So we have to. It's not okay to come with an aircraft that customers would not buy because it would be too expensive to operate or there would be no supply of green hydrogen for the majority of the airports where we would like this aircraft to fly. So that's the complete equation that we have to look at.
We come to the conclusion that first, there is feasibility. Second, we need to improve the, I would say, the performance of the fuel cell-based aircraft to have something that brings a competitive aircraft in the market when entering into service. The answer to your question is with different colors. We'll continue. On some of the topics, we'll accelerate. On others, we'll put on pause. Globally, the volume of people, the quantity of people that are working on hydrogen in general will go down. When it comes to fuel cell, to cryogenic technologies, we keep going, if not accelerating.
We will continue to monitor, but at a different pace or to contribute to the broader ecosystem, the hydrogen ecosystem, probably also at a slower pace as the rest of the world is not moving up as fast as we were expecting on green technologies against the backdrop of a more difficult energy transition in the world. That's what we are doing. Some projects will be put on pause, on hold. Others will be continued. Some will be accelerated. Overall, the size of the workforce will be smaller. We keep going and on the critical technologies at full speed.
Thank you. We take one more from the floor and then go back online.
Hello, I'm from Xinhua News Agency, and I have a question for Monsieur Faury. My question is, facing the uncertainties in the global trade, do you still have confidence in your investment in China, and are you going to further expand that? And in 2025, what's your special projects and plans for your investments in China? Thank you.
For China, we have a very clear roadmap that is mainly relying on ramp-up, growth on the single-aisle, on wide bodies, with services, with end-of-life activities, some R&T and R&D activities as well. So we keep going. This year is an important year for us because we want to bring the Line 2 of Tianjin into service. That would increase our capacity in China. And that's part of the increase of the world, the global capacity of Airbus to bring a single-aisle to market. By 2026, we will have 10 final assembly lines of A320 Family in the world, all capable of the A321, some of them in Europe being capable of the XLR. And China, Tianjin will be 20% of the world capacity for a market that is roughly 20% of the world market.
So we think we will be very consistent with the geographical repartition of what we are doing. You know that Tianjin is also capable of exporting. We've exported a third of what we have produced in Tianjin last year outside of China. So that's part of our global system, and we are very happy with what we do in China. The teams are doing a great job over there. The export customers that took delivery from Tianjin, we are very happy with what they got, with the quality, with the reliability. So we continue to move forward in China in the same way on our commercial activities, and we're also working on helicopters.
Thank you, Guillaume. So staying on the international theme, Guillaume, could you tell us a bit about your projects in India? This year, you have established partnerships and announced, among other things, a new assembly line for helicopters. What is India's role today and in the future in the group's supply chain? Thank you.
Yeah, thanks for asking the question. India has been a country of attention. I have been in India many times in the last two to three years. We are growing and we are supporting the growth of the aviation ecosystem of the airlines over there. You remember the landmark contract in 2023 at the Paris Air Show for 500 A320s with IndiGo, also the several very positive contracts with Air India for single-aisle, for wide bodies. So it's really an area of growth. A large part of our backlog today is with Indian airlines. We have secured access to equipment, to airplanes moving forward. We are also present in India. I think we are close to 5,000 people in India, I guess. We are doubling every two to three years, so it's going very fast with our own workforce.
Still, it's very small at the scale of India, but when we look at the partners and what we are sourcing in India, we are also growing very fast. We are more than $1 billion of sourcing a year in India going to $2 billion. And we have final assembly lines in the country for the 295 with our partners from Tata. It's the first real make-in-India project that comes to fruition, and we are making good progress. We are very happy with the support we get from TASL and TCS. We have announced the establishment of an assembly line for helicopters that just indicates the growth at which we go in India, and India is really very close to all we do in all our businesses: commercial, defense, and space, helicopters. There's growth, there's a good workforce, there's speed now in the private sector already.
There is ambition, and India is core to what we do and will continue to be core to what we do.
Thank you, Guillaume. And I should have said that question was from BFM Business, Jean-Baptiste Huet. Next question in the room.
Thank you. Claudia Scholz from The Pioneer. I wanted to ask you, how large is the budget that has been allocated to the hydrogen aircraft project so far? And the second one, why don't you want to keep on cutting costs in the commercial aircraft sector? Wouldn't it be better to increase the budget there to strengthen delivery numbers?
How large is the budget for hydrogen? It's very large. But we don't communicate on the amount of money we spend on R&T, on what we spend project by project for more competitive reasons than anything else. But it's not that we are ashamed. On the contrary, we are really investing very significantly, and I know the benchmark in industry, I can tell you it's serious. When it comes to commercial aircraft, well, you make a good point. We have a tension between the growth and the competitiveness. I mean, we are pedal on the metal when it comes to support to the ramp-up. At Airbus, actually, we are significantly ahead of the curve on the preparedness of the system. We have onboarded, I would say, too many people, at least too early compared to the real speed of the ramp-up.
But we really wanted to be ahead of the curve. We have experienced before COVID being slightly behind the curve, and we were limited by our own capacities. It's no longer the case. Today, we are limited by supply. We are limited by the bottlenecks of a number of suppliers. And therefore, on all we do, we want to be competitive. And therefore, we are at the same time reducing costs or limiting the increase of cost to the maximum extent to be competitive, but still enabling what needs to be done for the ramp-up. And that's the tension on cost- management that we always have when we are in ramp-up. So we try to be smart, not always managing to be, but trying to do the right things to not limit the ramp-up, to enable the ramp-up, but in a competitive way.
Hi, there. Hugh Davies from Airf inance Global. Thank you for your time and thank you for my question. Again, related to hydrogen, I was curious to get your thoughts on how you see the backlog, given the strength of the backlog, how you see that evolving and how hydrogen potentially can complement the commercial backlog, or is it something that could potentially cut into that backlog as the technology matures? Thank you.
So, I think if I read, it was the question. Sorry, we didn't hear you so well.
How hydrogen would complement the backlog?
Yeah, so given the strength of the backlog currently, how does hydrogen fit within that over time?
Yeah, so it's a very long-term question. In the current backlog, there's no hydrogen-powered aircraft. Entry into service was targeted 2035 with the outcome of the first loop of research and development and the assessment of the preparedness of the hydrogen ecosystem to welcome a hydrogen plane being significantly delayed. We're speaking about an entry into service that is 2040 and beyond. And that means it will not impact the backlog of Airbus in the sense of the number of aircraft that are contracted before then, and we are in 2025. So that's a long-term game.
Now, when we look at the long-term game, we absolutely believe that hydrogen-powered aircraft have a role to play in the long-term decarbonization of the industry because of the very nature of hydrogen as a fuel being highly energy-intensive per kilogram and leading to zero carbon in the air when emitted and zero non-carbon emission when we speak about the fuel cell. So that would impact what I think you refer to, to the backlog, meaning having signed contracts for planes, for Airbus in the 40s. We're still on the technologies. We're still on the feasibility of the product, the understanding of what a regulatory framework for hydrogen would look like, and what green hydrogen or decarbonized hydrogen supply would mean by when, where, at what price, for what competitiveness of the plane. That's the part of the equation that is probably the most uncertain at this very moment.
So, impacting backlog very far away, spending money for technologies now.
So, Guillaume, probably building on that answer. We've got a question from Jasmin Jessen online from Sustainability Magazine, who's building on the fact that you mentioned the hydrogen landscape is not as mature as originally predicted yet. Is there a point in time that Airbus will feel more confident in hydrogen fuel? What are we waiting for in that hydrogen ecosystem?
There's been a lot of work in the last years on bringing a hydrogen supply, green hydrogen supply to a number of industries as a way to decarbonize. The analysis of the landscape and of the progress has shown that a lot of projects have been put on the back burner or have been delayed or of lesser importance than what was expected five years ago. It will take for us to come to the view with a reasonable certainty that by entry into service of a hydrogen plane, there would be sufficient hydrogen supply, green hydrogen at the places where, at the airports where this needs to happen in due time. We are working with airports as well.
We have partnered with a number of airports which are willing to start introducing hydrogen in their operations much ahead of a plane, but starting with stationary equipment, with cars, equipment on wheel that are used on airports, buses. And that's the growth of the ecosystem that we need to see happening with sufficient confidence for gaining the comfort that at launch of the program, we have evidences that the entry into service would be successful from the hydrogen supply perspective. And that's not the case today.
Thank you. I think we have one more in the middle.
Yeah, Wolfgang Borgmann again. I have a question about the CityAirbus NextGen, which you paused because the battery systems are not yet there or the strength or the power in the battery systems that you need to operate this craft. What does it mean for the eVTOL market? I mean, if you don't have worse batteries than the others that are developing, I think everyone is affected by the same less favorable energy output of those batteries. And I mean, it would mean that old projects which are eVTOLs are dead at the moment and have to wait until there's a new battery generation. So it would be a shake-up for the whole market, I think, like Eve or Lilium or whoever may come and try an eVTOL at the moment.
Yeah, so to some extent, like the comments I made on the hydrogen plane, we entered into the eVTOL research and development with prudence because we thought at that time there was the need to have a commercially viable product, that there was a need to have clarity on the regulatory framework, maybe not as much as for the product and for the use of eVTOLs in urban, highly dense, populated areas, and also the supply of electricity in that case, but linked to the battery technologies. We entered into research on eVTOLs with a view that would help us prepare for a potential market, not being sure that this market would emerge.
That's already what we said a long time ago, I guess you remember, but also with a view that this would help us play at a small- scale with electric technologies that could be then scaled up on helicopters, on commercial planes, which has worked very effectively in that perspective. So what we see today is that the commercial viability of eVTOL in the current environment, technology, regulatory framework, market needs is not there. So we have decided to pause. We've learned a lot. We continue to use the technologies that we have so-called played with on other products that will be used for the next generation of commercial airplanes. There will be more electrification on board with some of the learnings we've had.
We pause because we think the conditions for going to the next step and going to prototype for a commercially viable product are not there. That's what we see indeed with other players. They don't manage to move forward because the conditions for success are not there. It's not just the battery energy and power density, but it's also because the acceleration or the speed of improvement of the energy density of a battery has not been as what was hoped for, considered, anticipated at the beginning of this decade. We just faced the reality that it will take more time. We are not saying never. I think that will come later, but we need also to understand better what would be the acceptability for society of having eVTOLs in dense and populated environments. If not, you go more to general aviation, electrically- powered.
That's also a market, but that's a small market in which we Airbus are not necessarily interested to play with.
One in the middle.
Hello, this is Jorge Penalba from Avion Revue. My question is, let me go back to the supply chain again. Regarding the delays and disruptions on production rates, all suppliers, even tier ones, are having cash flow issues because most of your contracts are based on a fixed price that is reduced with a learning curve of the production, which is not happening because there are many stops and halts and then restart again the production and everything. And my question is, are you renegotiating the contracts to flexible ones to take into account all this, which is not business as usual as it was before? Thank you.
Maybe it's worth looking at the past four years, so the past five years, 2019 to 2020, we went from 863 planes down to 566, so we roughly lost, if I may call it like this, 300 planes in terms of deliveries. That was the impact of COVID, and since 2020, we have increased roughly by 50 planes a year. So we have recovered 200 out of the 300 in four years. That's been a steady, albeit slower than expected recovery of the production. At Airbus, we've been quite linear, actually. We've been quite predictable. Back in 2022, and 2022 was a bad year in terms of ramping- up, as you might remember. We failed or we fell short of our expectations. We framed 2023 and 2024 with 720 for 2023 and 800 for 2024. That was 1,520 planes.
Actually, we have delivered 1,501 if you sum up 2023 and 2024. So we are missing 19 planes out of 1,520. That's sort of 1%. So we are not far from what we wanted to achieve at that time. Still, 2025 is again around 820. That's the guidance. That's roughly 50-ish, if I round it a bit brutally. So that's basically the pace, and that's quite predictable, actually. Now, it doesn't mean that it's easy for suppliers. They have indeed to digest COVID, ramp- up in a challenging environment where we had inflation, where we had very high interest rates, where the cost of raw material, of energy, and plenty of things were increasing.
So even if this is now cooling down, we've had to go with the supply chain through difficult times, and we have had a lot of case-by-case discussions to try to acknowledge, to face the reality of the suppliers depending on what they face. What we have not been willing to pay for is non-performance. And sometimes it happens that we have suppliers coming to us and wanting us to pay for the non-performance. That's not what we like to do. And we are also looking at the broader supply chain, the broader possibilities. We discussed India before. India is coming with a lot of new possibilities for us, and we are encouraging our existing suppliers or new ones to come to us with competitive solutions to continue to fight against the natural tendency of cost to go up if you don't do anything.
The do-nothing scenario is never a good one when it comes to cost- management.
Thank you. So I think we've managed to answer all of your questions. So thank you all for the great questions. And of course, to you, Thomas, and to you, Guillaume, for the great answers to those questions. So we'll bring the press conference to a close now. And once again, we really thank you for being with us today and for joining us online. And a warm thank you, a huge thank you to all the communications colleagues for making this event possible. We really appreciate that. And if you have any follow-up questions or, of course, feedback that you want to share with us, please reach out to the media relations team. You know them. They'll be happy to support. We wish you a great rest of the day. We'll have some time to exchange with you. And many thanks, everybody.
Thank you, everyone.