Airbus quietly celebrated on its social networks the first flight of the serial number 10,000 jet of the A320 family. The aircraft, an A321neo, will be delivered to the airline MEA soon.
The milestone is quite significant because the A320 family is relatively recent. The first airplane produced was ready in 1987 and today it is part of the Aeroscopia Museum in Toulouse, near the Airbus headquarters.
Since then, the single-aisle aircraft has become the biggest opponent of the 737, the most popular jet in history. But while the Boeing model took 50 years to deliver the 10,000th 737 in 2018, Airbus is expected to reach that volume soon.
Up to August, airframer had accumulated 9,486 aircraft delivered from the A320 family, which indicates that there are about 500 units ready for delivery today, but which have been deferred by its customers due to the drop in demand for passenger air traffic.
Almost half of that volume (4,751) is from the A320ceo, the first version of the jet, followed by the ‘big brother’, the A321ceo, with 1,759 aircraft delivered by August. The A319ceo variant has so far delivered 1,480 units while the new A320neo and A321neo have already accumulated 1,044 and 370 aircraft sent to customers.
At the bottom of the list are A318, the failing smallest member of the family, and the A319neo, which had only two of the 84 ordered planes delivered.
The numbers of the A320 family only tend to grow even more in the coming years as Airbus currently has more than 6,000 orders to deliver to its customers.
