Airbus deliveries jump in May as China standoff eases

Airbus’s May delivery spike points to more than a one-month bounce. The planemaker handed over 81 aircraft, up from 51 in May 2025, as planes that had been held up in a regulatory standoff with China began to clear through the system again.

The rebound matters because deliveries are one of the clearest gauges of commercial health in aerospace. Airbus had already told investors on April 28 that its first quarter was weak, with 114 commercial aircraft delivered, revenue of €12.7 billion, adjusted EBIT of €0.3 billion and free cash flow before customer financing of minus €2.5 billion. Even so, it kept its 2026 guidance unchanged and stood by a full-year target of about 870 commercial aircraft deliveries.

The China issue had become a visible drag on that first-quarter performance. Airbus chief executive Guillaume Faury described the problem as an “administrative delay,” and said it had been resolved. Reporting at the time said nearly 20 aircraft bound for Chinese customers were caught up in the holdup, helping drive Airbus’s weakest first-quarter delivery total since 2009. Chief financial officer Thomas Toepfer said the company had built about €5 billion of inventory in the quarter, underscoring how quickly aircraft that are finished on the production line can turn into balance-sheet strain if handovers stall.

The May figure suggests Airbus was able to release at least part of that backlog quickly once the bottleneck eased. That is significant for cash generation, because deliveries normally trigger payments and improve near-term financial momentum. It also gives Airbus a better platform to make up lost ground after a slow start to the year.

But the episode also highlights how easily commercial aviation can be pulled into wider industrial and diplomatic disputes. Reuters reported in late May that China had been stalling Airbus delivery approvals amid frustration over slower European certification of COMAC’s C919, a narrow-body jet that has not yet won European approval. The Civil Aviation Administration of China and the European Union Aviation Safety Agency sit at the center of that larger contest, where market access, certification and fleet planning can all become bargaining chips.

For Airbus, May looked like a release valve. The bigger test is whether the second quarter brings sustained normalization, or whether this was only a temporary easing in a supply chain already shaped by geopolitics.