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This New Airbus Jet Is Bad News for Boeing
While Boeing is bogged down, its archrival is pulling ahead with a new model that’s a symbol of their diverging fortunes
By Benjamin Katz, WSJ
Feb. 18, 2025 9:00 pm ET
Airbus has a new jet that’s winning over some of Boeing’s best customers. It also raises the specter of more trouble ahead for the U.S. plane maker.
The European company started delivering the new aircraft—the A321XLR—late last year against a backdrop of manufacturing upheaval and financial strain at its American rival. So far the XLR has racked up more than 500 orders, many from airlines looking to replace older Boeing planes.
The jet’s success is one of the starkest signs yet of the diverging fortunes of the two companies, with Boeing’s troubles leading to gaps in its product lineup that are now being exploited by Airbus. It is also a warning of a bigger threat looming: While Boeing is strapped for cash, Airbus is increasingly investing in an entirely new generation of aircraft that could shape the duopoly for decades to come.
American Airlines and United Airlines have chosen Airbus’s XLR to replace their aging Boeing 757 fleets. Other airlines including Australia’s Qantas have also purchased the XLR—the first time that carrier has ordered one of Airbus’s smaller, narrow-body jets.
Central to the XLR’s appeal is a giant fuel tank behind the wings that means the aircraft can carry up to 220 passengers on trips as long as 11 hours. That is far longer than typical narrow-body jets, allowing airlines to open up new direct routes—including across the Atlantic—without needing to sell as many tickets as they would with a bigger, wide-body plane.
The new model—the latest in its A320 family of aircraft—has another advantage: It doesn’t have much competition. Boeing discontinued the 757 in 2004 and shelved plans to build a new aircraft that would have competed directly with the XLR in 2020. The U.S. company’s main rival aircraft—the 737 MAX 10—is years behind schedule, awaiting signoff from the Federal Aviation Administration.
“Clearly the first priority for Boeing is to resolve its manufacturing problems, which is no small issue,” said Nick Cunningham, an analyst at Agency Partners who has followed the industry for almost 40 years. “But the very next thing they need to address is the product.”
Customer doubts
Airbus usurped Boeing as the world’s biggest plane maker in 2019 following the grounding of the 737 MAX after two fatal accidents. It has delivered more jets and booked more net orders each year since.
In 2024, Airbus not only pulled further ahead in narrow-body aircraft but also cut into Boeing’s long-held lead in sales of wide-bodies, partly aided by repeated delays to the American company’s 777X. With many 777s reaching the end of their lifespans, Airbus says the battle for bigger jets is just starting, including with its first-ever dedicated freighter.
Boeing currently has six passenger jet models available for customers, with four still awaiting signoff from regulators. Airbus has 12 distinct models available.
Benoît de Saint-Exupéry, Airbus’s head of jet sales, attributed the company’s performance to its product lineup, while acknowledging it had also benefited from the situation at Boeing “casting some doubts in the minds of some customers.”
It hasn’t been all gloom for Boeing. The company in December announced a landmark order for up to 200 MAX 10 jets from Turkey’s Pegasus—a carrier that predominantly operates Airbus jets. American Airlines also doubled down on its commitment to the MAX 10 with 85 new orders last March.
And Airbus isn’t without its own problems. Supply-chain issues have limited the company’s plans to turbocharge production and meet booming demand in the wake of the pandemic. This month, Airbus said it was delaying a long-touted hydrogen-powered jet.
Lightweight frames and folding wings
Still, Airbus’s superior financial position means it can embark on the expensive work of launching an all-new jet—giving it a head start in the battle for future leadership of the industry.
In the five years since 2019, Airbus has spent some $12.9 billion on research and development in its commercial-aircraft division. Boeing’s plane-making business has spent $8 billion. Both also invest in other units that develop technology that can later be used in commercial aircraft.
Airbus has been working on lightweight airframes, fuel-efficient engines and even folding wings that could feature on a next-generation aircraft. The company is starting to narrow down the designs for an all-new plane that it expects to launch around 2030 and enter into service seven or eight years later.
Boeing is far behind.
“We spend more time arguing within ourselves than we do thinking about Airbus and how we’re gonna beat Airbus to the punch,” Boeing Chief Executive Kelly Ortberg told workers at a companywide briefing in November, weeks after the first XLR was delivered.
But Ortberg is clear that Boeing isn’t yet in a financial position to launch a new aircraft.
“We’ve got to spend a little bit more focus on getting ready, getting the business back to generating cash so that we have the cash to support the new airplane development,” Ortberg said. “That is absolutely critical for us.”
To focus on getting its delayed models to market, Boeing has shifted some engineers from a jet development project with NASA—called X-66—that could set the stage for its own next-generation plane. A Boeing spokeswoman referred to comments Ortberg made last month, in which he said the company was still investing in X-66 and that technology from that program could factor in an all-new plane.
Boeing hasn’t launched an all-new aircraft for more than two decades. The 787, formally announced in 2004, cost tens of billions of dollars to develop and took seven years to hit the market. The plane maker spent almost as many years figuring out what that aircraft would look like.
‘The queen on the chessboard’
Executives at both companies have long likened their duopolistic rivalry to a complex and expensive game of chess. Before making a move, each side carefully assesses the other’s lineup and games out how they might respond.
They don’t always get it right. The annals of aviation history are littered with failed aircraft programs, including Airbus’s flagship A380 superjumbo.
Boeing’s hasty development of the 737 MAX, which was delivered to customers with a fatal flaw, came as the company sought to respond to a revamped Airbus jet—the A320neo—that took Boeing by surprise in 2010.
For Airbus, Boeing’s woes mean the game has changed, said Christian Scherer, head of the plane maker’s commercial-aircraft division. Airbus now has more freedom when making strategic decisions “instead of responding to a threatening move of the queen on the chessboard,” he said.
Write to Benjamin Katz at ben.katz@wsj.com
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