Airbus investigates A321neo flaw as deliveries slip into congested fourth quarter

By Tim Hepher and Giulia Segreti

PARIS, Sept 28 (Reuters) - Airbus and Italy's Leonardo are investigating a glitch that triggered a quality alert on 500 best-selling A321neo jets and left the planemaker with a narrowing margin to meet 2026 delivery goals, said two people close to the matter.

The flaw, which Airbus confirmed on Friday after a report in the Air Current, has contributed to slower than expected jet deliveries in September, leaving Airbus a record industrial task to meet targets for the year, two other industry sources added.

One of those sources said that as many as 20 jets had slipped into an already congested fourth quarter.

Airbus declined comment on partial monthly data but said last Friday that its 2026 goal of about 870 deliveries was intact.

Regulators say the quality alert does not affect safety but analysts warned earlier that the second fuselage glitch in less than a year could put new pressure on Airbus efforts to accelerate deliveries and meet targets in the second half of the year.

"The supply chain is still not under control; we thought it was, but it isn't," said aviation analyst Rob Morris.

"It just takes one company and suddenly you have a problem."

He added that Airbus had delivered almost 50 jets this month. Assuming a last-minute push to 60, down from 73 a year ago, Airbus would need to beat its previous quarterly record of 297 deliveries in the closing months of 2018 by 13%, he said.

MISSING PRIMER

The latest flaw emerged in August, when an Airbus technician scraped paint from a fuselage part only to find gaps in the protective primer underneath, the first two sources said.

The problem involves strengthening rods called stringers in one section of the forward fuselage of the A321neo and has raised fresh questions over quality controls and points of vulnerability embedded in the supply chain.

Airbus has two suppliers for that section, Leonardo and its own in-house supplier Airbus Atlantic, formerly Stelia, which also has overall charge of the front part of the aircraft.

However, Leonardo has only one supplier for the coatings, a private company called TESI, located south of Naples, they said.

Teams of engineers from Airbus and Leonardo are now deployed at the firm to support recovery efforts and find the cause of the problem, which has yet to be identified, the sources said.

TESI did not reply to requests for comment. Airbus declined to name suppliers. Leonardo has confirmed TESI is a supplier for Airbus-related work but not whether it was involved in this case.

Airbus has said that 250 of the 500 affected planes are still in various stages of production but that there is no safety risk.

Airlines continuing to take delivery will be given two years to repair the affected part, rather than the usual four-year maintenance cycle, with work expected to take up to nine days including 2-3 days for the core repair job, the sources said.

That is less than some analysts had feared since the parts will not need to be removed from the fuselage panel.

The primer is designed to prevent corrosion that can appear over time in the lowest point of a plane's fuselage known by the nautical term "bilge" - an area where moisture builds up.

(Reporting by Tim HepherEditing by Louise Heavens and David Goodman)