Chadi Saade has more than 25 years of experience in the aviation industry, joining Airbus in 2003 as an account sales director. In 2008, he joined NetJets to serve as managing director of sales and marketing, before returning to Airbus in 2009 as sales director. Since then, he has served in both the corporate jet and the airline roles. In 2024, Saade was named president of Airbus Corporate Jets in 2024.
Q. Airbus Corporate Jets had a record year for orders in 2024. What is the state of the market today?
A. I think the market is clearly going in a very strong direction. We started to feel the pickup in the market quite significantly last year. Traditionally speaking at Airbus, we do a handful of ACJs (Airbus Corporate Jets). ACJ is not the core business of Airbus. We’re in the airline business, and actually, it’s one of the advantages of that—we design aircraft for airlines, so when we adapt them for corporate jets, they come at a very, very, very aggressive operating cost.
We usually sell a handful of aircraft (corporate jets), and last year, if I take the orders and commitments, we reached a record year of 17 aircraft. It’s 11 firm orders and six options. This is clearly a record year for us and very significant to reach double-digit numbers.
When I came out of last year and I was trying to forecast for this year, I was saying, “Wow, with the crazy (2024), this year in 2025 it’s going to be tough.” What I’m seeing is we’re not in these numbers yet, and we’re far from that. But we are seeing quite an important market.
We have announced some orders. You will see some announcements as well at the end of this month (October 2025), and we have several deals in the pipe; probably next month, they will materialize. So, we’re seeing quite a strong market. There’s also a lot of links now with lessors in some cases, because of our availability, which are far off in time.
We are seeing some governments, as well as some high-net-worth individuals, who are announcing some deals with lessors. There’s even been a government in the Pacific, which just recently announced two 321XLRs, which made this deal with a lessor. There is an appetite in the market in general. And this is across the portfolio of ACJ products.
Q. How is the market geographically?
A. In terms of geographical locations, we’re seeing quite a strong demand coming from the Middle East and Southeast Asia.
The Middle East is booming. There are even some secondhand aircraft that are moving to the Middle East ... We have an extremely low number of ACJs available on the secondhand market, which is really good for the residual value of the aircraft. Then you see that Europe is a bit quieter, probably due to all the geopolitics that are happening in the region.
The U.S. is also strong, but it is, historically speaking, it is still the market that we are penetrating. It’s not our largest market share. I think it represents roughly 8% of our market share worldwide. I’m pleased to say that … probably this number of aircraft in the U.S. is going to double in the next three years in terms of aircraft in service.
So, it’s a niche market. But … in terms of numbers, it is small, but it’s growing quite importantly.
Q. What is the market by segment?
A. We usually tackle three segments of the market, which are the governments, the corporates and the high-net-worth individuals—highly influential people.
(In) government, we’re still seeing quite strong demand. Governments usually renew the aircraft that they had in their fleet. If they had an (Airbus A319), they would go and search for another 319 and so forth. We’re seeing in several regions of the world that governmental transport is becoming critical, especially with all the geopolitics around the world: It’s really important.
Corporates: We are seeing more and more what I’m going to call shuttle services. We’re not talking about anything luxurious here. We are talking about an aircraft that is fitted in all business class seats to be used for the (corporate) board or to be used for a sports team or to be used for specific missions. This is also a segment that is doing quite well.
And then, highly influential people—this is traditionally a segment—again, in the Middle East and Southeast Asia, it is growing quite fast.
So, strong last year, quite strong this year on all three segments of the market, with governments and corporate shuttles being in the lead.
Q. How does it work producing a corporate jet for Airbus, which is an airline provider, especially with its large backlog?
A. (At Airbus) we have a backlog of aircraft today (8,754 as of the end of June). It’s quite significant. On the single aisle, the 320s or the 330s or the 350s today, if an airline comes to Airbus and wants to place an order, we have nothing in the next four, five, six years, seven years sometimes, depending on the model. So, clearly, when a government comes to us or when a VIP comes to us or corporate and we tell them, “Hey, you need to wait seven years to get your aircraft,” it’s not going to work.
So, what we do is we have, on certain products of the portfolio, some pre-allocated positions for us. And if we don’t sell them at a certain time, it goes back to the airline world. So, 220, 319, 320, we can offer entry into service of aircraft in 2028, which is three years from now. This is also due to the strong backlog we have.
Q. What is your biggest challenge as a large corporate jet provider?
A. It’s the lack of demonstration aircraft. Most of the OEMs today and especially the OEMs where their core business is private aviation have their own fleet of demonstration aircraft. Airbus’ policy is not to have a demonstration aircraft. It is not the core business of Airbus. We don’t have a demo aircraft, so it’s not easy for us.
When somebody wants to purchase an aircraft, they say, “Can I try it?” So, he goes and he tries it. Airbus’s policy is not to have a demonstration aircraft. So, when a customer says, “I want to try an aircraft,” it’s not easy for us to go and find him an aircraft.
Another thing, which is difficult: When we go to airshows, we charter an aircraft to go and display it at an airshow. First of all, there are not a lot of ACJs available to charter because most of our owners prefer to keep them for themselves, be it government or corporate or whatever. So, few aircraft are available for charter.
This doesn’t happen often to us, but we have a static display, which is booked at NBAA, but we didn’t find an aircraft to take to NBAA. Our existing owners are flying it and they’re ready to charter it to us. This is the biggest challenge for us.
Q. Are there any other main challenges?
A. The other learning is how to penetrate new markets. The A220 is opening up a new market for ACJ. Up until now, we were selling green aircraft, which means it’s an aircraft without the furniture. With the 220, we decided to deliver an overall aircraft, which comes with the furniture.
We’re addressing a new market, which is the market of the traditional business jet. It takes time when you reach this market to spread the word to show the aircraft to all the prospects, to kick up the whole thing. We’re pretty happy at the moment.
We have secured nine sales for the ACJ 220. There are three of them that are already in service. The fourth one, which is currently in the acceptance phase, and the others will come in the months and years to come.
Q. What is your partnership with Comlux on finishing out the interiors?
A. We have an agreement with Comlux to handle the first number of cabins. And this is the partnership that we made with them, is they handle the first 15 cabins and then we take it from there. After that, either we’re happy with the relationship and there’s no reason to change, or we want to open up and then we will open up for other outfitters.
Q. How does it work for the other models?
A. We specialize in green aircraft. We know how to build them. It’s an industrial machine, one after the other. However, the cabins—each one of them is unique. That’s why we have agreed to sign cooperation agreements with five approved outfitters today in Europe, and one of them, who is in the U.S.
(Customers) can go and outfit their aircraft wherever they want. However, they know that the five outfitters whom we audited—we audited their ways of working, their quality standards, their communication between them and Airbus and so on, the processes and everything—these are the five that we approved.
There’s Comlux in the U.S. The four who are in Europe are Lufthansa (Technik), Jet Aviation, AMAC (Aerospace) and Fokker (Services Group), who were approved earlier this year. Fokker is the latest to come on board. We have secured so many sales on the green aircraft parts that they have a huge workload, so we needed to have a fifth outfitter on board to be able to give solutions to our customers.
Q. Talk about the A220 for a minute.
A, The 220 would be the perfect next step in terms of size for all the large-cabin aircraft, especially when it comes at a similar acquisition price, but it’s bringing 30% lower operating costs. We design aircraft for the airline world, where the airline world is highly sensitive to the cost of operating an aircraft, and that’s why we design highly efficient aircraft in terms of operations. So, when we bring them to private aviation or business aviation, the operating costs are the same.
That’s why the value proposition of the aircraft, when you say to someone, is coming at 2.5 times the size of their (existing) aircraft; however, similar parking space, so your hangar, you don’t need to replace it. What I’m offering you for the same price is much lower operating costs and much more baggage capacity, for example. So, it makes the value proposition quite unique for the end customer.
Q. Customers want connectivity in their cabins. What are you offering?
A. We’re bringing to the market a fairly new and extremely efficient connectivity solution. The first two aircraft are rolling out as we speak with the OneWeb solution. We signed (memoranda of understanding) with Gogo and OneWeb less than a year ago, and now the solution will be in service, which is a connectivity solution, which is 10 times faster than the Ka band, which has 10 times more bandwidth at half the price of the Ka band, in a nutshell. This will enhance the overall customer journey, be it a president, ministers or a company that is flying on it.
Q. I’m hearing new customers are younger than they’ve traditionally been in the past. Are you seeing that?
A. It’s a new generation; they have much greater ideas. And when they have such a tool to go from one country to the other to run their meetings, it’s certainly something which is valuable and we’re seeing that more and more. COVID opened the eyes of the people of how business aviation can be efficient. They discovered the increased efficiency, which is what’s relayed in our surveys, which we’ve done—security (and) efficiency of traveling on a business jet is extremely valuable.
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