Airbus Confirms 72 September Deliveries and 547 for the Year, With Orders at a 2026 Low
Airbus has published its official orders and deliveries figures for September 2026, turning the provisional estimate of about 72 aircraft that circulated earlier in the week into a confirmed count. The bulletin, issued on 8 October, shows 72 aircraft handed over to 37 customers, 17 gross orders, and a backlog that slipped to 9,310 aircraft. The detail behind those headline numbers shows where the year's deliveries have come from, which programmes are lagging, and how steep the final quarter now looks.
The September numbers
According to trade-press summaries of the bulletin, September deliveries were split across six variants: 37 A321neos, 21 A320neos, one A319neo, eight A220-300s, three A350-900s and two A330-900s. That makes 59 aircraft from the A320 family alone, or the large majority of the month's output. The 72 deliveries compare with 57 in August and 73 in September 2025, which one outlet described as broadly flat year on year.
Customers named in coverage of the bulletin include IndiGo, which took 10 aircraft (seven A321neos and three A320neos), Delta Air Lines with six jets, and American Airlines with three A321neos. AeroTime also listed British Airways and Emirates among the recipients. One milestone was reported by AeroTime: the first A320-family aircraft assembled at Airbus's second final assembly line in Tianjin, China, was delivered to China Eastern Airlines on 22 September.
Airbus's own orders and deliveries page now shows cumulative programme totals of 26,615 orders and 17,305 deliveries since inception, which leaves 9,310 aircraft still to be built. By family, that page lists 1,107 A220 orders against 550 deliveries, 20,435 A320-family orders against 12,900 deliveries, 2,005 A330 orders against 1,674 deliveries, 1,624 A350 orders against 737 deliveries, and 251 A380s, all delivered.
A thin month for orders
September was a weak month for new business. Airbus booked 17 gross orders from two customers: 15 A320neos for Air Cairo and two A321neos for FlyOne Armenia. AeroTime called it the lowest monthly total of the year. The contrast with earlier months is large. Aerospace Global News reported 379 gross orders in May and 331 in March, and Air Data News put August at 67 gross orders.
Cancellations also took a bite. Ajot reported three cancellations in September, and Air Data News noted that the A220-300 line saw three net cancellations, with Macquarie Financial Holdings reducing its position by eight aircraft while DAE Airfinance Holdings added five. Air Data News also reported that American Airlines gained 18 A321neo orders in the cumulative data through reassignments from undisclosed customers, which it described as reallocations rather than new business.
For the first nine months, gross orders stand at 1,174 aircraft. After 69 cancellations, net orders come to 1,105. Aerospace Global News gave the gross total by family as 830 for the A320 family, 182 for the A220, 95 for the A350 and 67 for the A330. Air Data News broke the A320 family figure down further, reporting 591 A321neos and 238 A320neos among the year's gross orders.
The backlog fell from 9,368 aircraft at the end of August to 9,310 at the end of September, a drop of 58. Seventy-two deliveries and three cancellations, against 17 new orders, account for that movement. Air Data News gave the backlog by variant as 5,656 A321neos, 1,860 A320neos, 13 A319neos, 519 A350-900s, 320 A330-900s and 524 A220-300s. Those figures are reported by that outlet and cover only the variants it listed.
Nine months of deliveries by programme
Year-to-date deliveries reached 547 aircraft to 84 customers, up about 8% from 507 in the same period of 2025. Aerospace Global News gave the split by programme and the change from a year earlier:
- A320 family: 428 aircraft, up 9.2%
- A220: 68 aircraft, up 9.7%
- A350: 38 aircraft, up 15.2%
- A330: 13 aircraft, down 35.0%
The four programmes add up to the 547 total. The picture is one of growth in the three programmes that carry most of the volume and a sharp shortfall in the A330neo. The A320 family accounts for roughly three in every four aircraft delivered so far this year, a share that follows directly from the figures above.
The A330neo problem
The A330 is the clearest weak spot. AeroTime reported that the programme delivered no aircraft in June or July, a single aircraft in August and two in September.
The earlier provisional report on September deliveries had already linked weakness on the A330 and A321neo to quality issues weighing on the year-end target. The official bulletin does not itself explain the A330 gap; the explanations come from press coverage of the figures rather than from the delivery tables.
What the fourth quarter now demands
Airbus is aiming for around 870 deliveries in 2026, which Ajot described as a 10% increase from the 793 aircraft delivered in 2025. With 547 delivered through September, outlets calculated that Airbus needs 323 deliveries in the final three months. Aerospace Global News and AeroTime put the required average at about 108 aircraft a month, against 72 in September, 57 in August and 67 in June. AeroTime's headline framed the task as delivering more than 100 jets a month to reach the goal. The 547 delivered so far is 62.9% of the target, according to Aerospace Global News.
The bulletins reviewed here do not give a monthly path for the fourth quarter, and Airbus did not publish one alongside the figures. Chief Executive Lars Wagner, however, said he was "very confident" about meeting the target despite production challenges, as reported by Aerospace Global News.
What to watch next
Several data points will show whether the pace is moving toward what the target requires. The first is the October bulletin, the next official monthly update, which will show whether deliveries move well above September's 72. A figure near 70 would leave the November and December requirement larger still.
The second is the A330 line. With two deliveries in September after a near-empty summer, any month with a multiple of that figure would suggest the tail plane inspections are not holding up handovers. The third is the Tianjin line, whose first delivery to China Eastern on 22 September adds a second Chinese-assembled stream of A320-family aircraft. Its contribution to the final quarter was not quantified in the coverage reviewed.
The in-service fleet and the backlog
Airbus's page also lists the in-service fleet by family: 544 A220s, 11,374 A320-family aircraft, 1,401 A330s, 736 A350s and 193 A380s, for a total of 14,593. Set against 9,310 aircraft on order, that gives a sense of the size of the backlog relative to the aircraft already flying.
On the order side, the 17-aircraft month does not change the size of the book relative to annual output of fewer than 900 deliveries. It does show a gap between the pace of new orders earlier in the year, when May and March each produced more than 300 gross orders, and the pace now. Net orders of 1,105 for nine months, set against 547 deliveries, mean the order book has still grown in absolute terms across the year even after September's fall of 58 aircraft.
Sources
- Airbus, Orders and Deliveries page (airbus.com), September 2026 data
- Air Data News, "Airbus delivers 72 jets in September as order backlog falls by 58 aircraft"
- Aerospace Global News, "Airbus needs 323 deliveries in Q4 to hit 2026 target"
- AeroTime, "Airbus must deliver over 100 jets a month to hit 2026 goal"
- Ajot, "Airbus confirms 72 jet deliveries in September"