Airbus and Boeing Focus On Own Survival

Many airlines are on the brink of collapse, as are many suppliers. And the financial pressures on the OEMs and large suppliers are so intense that they have no choice but to focus on their own survival rather than considering customer financing or supplier support at any scale.

Airbus had already announced a 30% across-the-board production cut on April 8. Now Boeing, too, is scaling back big-time in various ways: cutting into commercial production rates and curtailing the pace of development programs and future projects. Boeing is hamstrung with both dealing with the COVID-19 repercussions and also the worldwide grounding of their MAX narrowbody aircraft.

Analysts have suggested that Airbus will have to make further cuts of a similar size as customers continue to defer deliveries. However, the OEM will not decide on such changes to its production rates before June.

Boeing has since resumed their 787 operations at Boeing South Carolina (BSC), with most of the employees returning to work since early May.