Building the world’s biggest passenger jet, the Airbus A380, demanded a factory of equal stature. But the double-decker airliner was a commercial failure and the 50-hectare Jean-Luc Lagardère centre in the French city of Toulouse produced the last of the model in 2021.
Three years on, a facility with a central hangar that can shelter 500 tennis courts under a 46m-high ceiling, has roared back to life with renewed purpose: helping the European plane maker fulfil a 7,197-strong backlog for its best-selling A320 series of smaller, single-aisle jets. By 2026, Lagardère will be one of 10 final assembly lines working at a pace of about 75 planes a month.
While Airbus’s production lines are humming, its arch-rival Boeing is engulfed in crisis. The dramatic mid-air blowout of a door plug on the fuselage, the plane’s main body, during an Alaska Airlines flight on January 5 has cast a shadow over Boeing’s 737 Max series — a direct competitor to Airbus’s A320 and the American company’s biggest source of revenue in its commercial aircraft business.