Industry Airbus opens the fourth A320 Family production line in Hamburg

With the new production line, Airbus has announced to ramp up the single-aisle program to 60 aircraft per month by mid-2019.

Frank Horch, Hamburg’s Senator of Economy, Transport and Innovation and Thomas Jarzombek, Federal Government Coordinator of German Aerospace Policy, witnessed the milestone together with Guillaume Faury, President Airbus Commercial Aircraft, and 500 distinguished guests at a special ceremony in Hamburg.

“The inauguration of our latest, most modern A320 production line opens a new chapter in efficient, digital aircraft manufacturing,” said Guillaume Faury. “With these new technologies we are building our aircraft more efficiently, a key enabler for higher production rates. I would like to thank the teams who pushed this newest Airbus production standard from concept to reality.”

Airbus has received orders for over 14.000 A320 Family aircraft and delivered over 8100. According to Airbus, the A320neo Family has captured nearly a 60 percent market share with more than 6,000 orders from 100 customers.

The A320 Family aircraft are manufactured globally, at Airbus sites in Europe, China and the US. In addition to the new production line, Airbus also inaugurated a larger and modernised Hamburg A320 Family delivery centre with more customer areas, more efficient delivery processes and increased hospitality services.

The new production line in Hamburg will make use of digital technologies and a more flexible industrial setup. The line features two seven-axis robots for automated fuselage drilling. These robots are able to drill almost 80 percent of holes on the upper side of the sections, which improves the ergonomic working environment. The robots also drill with higher accuracy to ensure a constant level of production quality resulting in less rework. Furthermore, the new line features an innovative layout and the use of mobile tooling platforms that navigate autonomously with laser trackers.