Airbus A320neo family
The Airbus A320neo family is an incremental development of the A320 family of narrow-body airliners produced by Airbus.
The A320neo family is based on the enhanced variant of the previous generation A319, A320, and A321, which was then retroactively renamed the A320ceo family.
Re-engined with CFM International LEAP or Pratt & Whitney PW1000G engines and fitted with sharklet wingtip devices as standard, the A320neo is 15% to 20% more fuel efficient than previous models, the A320ceo.
It was launched on 1 December 2010, made its first flight on 25 September 2014 and was introduced by Lufthansa on 25 January 2016.
By 2019, the A320neo had a 60% market share against the competing Boeing 737 MAX; in 2023, the Chinese designed Comac C919 joined these two as another direct competitor.
, a total of 11,529 A320neo family aircraft had been ordered by more than 130 customers, of which 4,372 aircraft had been delivered. The global A320neo fleet had completed more than 18 million flights over 38 million block hours with one hull loss being an airport-safety related accident.
Development
In 2006 Airbus started the A320 Enhanced programme as a series of improvements targeting a 4–5% efficiency gain with large winglets, aerodynamic refinements, weight savings and a new aircraft cabin. At the time, Airbus' Sales Chief John Leahy said: "Who's going to roll over a fleet to a new generation aircraft for 5% better than an A320 today? Especially if another 10% improvement might be coming in the second half of the next decade based on new engine technology".Airbus launched the sharklet blended wingtip device during the November 2009 Dubai Airshow. The installation adds but offers a 3.5% fuel burn reduction on flights over.
New engine option
Compared to the re-engine improvement of 15%, an all-new single-aisle would have brought only 3% more gain while high volume manufacturing in carbon fibre could be much more expensive.Airbus planned to offer two engine choices, the CFM International LEAP-1A and the Pratt & Whitney GTF, with 20% lower maintenance cost than current A320 engines. The new engines burn 16% less fuel, though the actual gain is slightly less as 1–2% is typically lost when installed on an existing aircraft.
At the February 2010 Singapore Air Show, Airbus said its decision to launch was scheduled for the July 2010 Farnborough Air Show. On 1 December 2010, Airbus launched the A320neo "New Engine Option" with more range or more payload, and planned to deliver 4,000 over 15 years.
Development costs were predicted to be "slightly more than €1 billion ". The neo list price would be $6 million more than the ceo, including $3.5 million for airframe modifications and around $0.9 million for the sharklets. The A320neo was slated for service entry in spring 2016, the A321neo six months later and the A319neo six months after that.
The 2010 order for 40 Bombardier CS300s and 40 options from Republic Airways Holdings – then owner of exclusive A319/320 operator Frontier Airlines – pushed Airbus into the re-engine. Airbus COO-customers John Leahy decided against ignoring the CSeries and allowing it to grow, as Boeing had previously done with Airbus, and instead aggressively competed against Bombardier Aerospace.
Introduction was then advanced to October 2015. Airbus claims a 15% fuel saving and "over 95 percent airframe commonality with the current A320".
Its commonality helped to reduce delays associated with large changes.
In March 2013, airlines' choices between the two engines were almost equal.
The new "Space-Flex" optional cabin configuration increases space-efficiency with a new rear galley configuration and a "Smart-Lav" modular lavatory design allowing an in-flight change of two lavatories into one accessible toilet.
The "Cabin-Flex" configuration for the A321neo allows up to 20 more passengers without "putting more sardines in the can" by rearranging the door layout of the aircraft.
Total fuel consumption per seat is reduced by over 20%, while the rearranged cabin allows up to nine more passengers for the A320neo.
The first Airbus A320neo rolled out of the Toulouse factory on 1 July 2014 and first flight was scheduled for September 2014.
Flight testing
The first flight of the neo occurred on 25 September 2014. Its Pratt & Whitney PW1100G-JM geared turbofan engine was certified by the Federal Aviation Administration on 19 December 2014.After 36 months, the A320neo and A321neo had flown around 4,000 hours for certification of the two powerplant versions. This is about three-quarters of the certification effort of a new design.
Of these 4,000 hours flown, 2,250 were with PW GTFs and 1,770 with CFM LEAPs. The flight test programme was to conclude in 2018 with the completion of A319neo testing. The changes impact flying qualities, performance and system integration; they entailed retuning the fly-by-wire controls and meeting type certification requirements which have evolved since 1988, and helped decrease the minimum V speeds. The neo is 1.8t heavier than the ceo, but take-off and landing performance is the same with a modified rotation law, adjusted wing flap and wing slat angles and rudder deflection increased by 5° to cope with the higher thrust.
The A320neo is half as loud as an A320 at take-off, with an 85-decibel noise footprint. The LEAP-powered A321neo has 83.3 dB flyover noise, substantially lower than the older CFM56 and V2500.
Entry into service
The first delivery of the aircraft slipped slightly, Lufthansa taking delivery of the first A320neo on 20 January 2016 and deploying it on its first commercial flight from Frankfurt to Munich on 25 January 2016.Two hundred deliveries were targeted in 2017, but as Pratt & Whitney faced ramp-up difficulties, Airbus expected that thirty aircraft would be parked awaiting engines.
Production
At the start of production in 2017, Airbus was delivering 50 A320-family aircraft per month, and targeted a production rate of 60 per month by 2019. By October 2017, only 90 A320neos had been delivered, and Airbus acknowledged it would miss its target of 200 deliveries for the year, even with increased fourth-quarter output. More than 40 completed aircraft were parked without engines, but as engine issues were largely resolved by early 2018, Airbus expected that more than half of all A320-family deliveries in 2018 would be neos.Airbus reiterated its goal of producing 60 narrow-body aircraft per month by mid-2019 and examined higher rates. In April 2018, Airbus confirmed plans to increase monthly output to 63 from 55 in 2018, while studying rates of 70 to 75 aircraft per month beyond 2019, although engine supplier capacity constrained near-term expansion.
In February 2018, following in-flight shutdowns of the PW1100G caused by compressor aft hub and seal issues, the European Union Aviation Safety Agency and Airbus grounded portions of the A320neo fleet until replacement parts were available. Airbus subsequently stopped accepting PW1100G engines, and deliveries of GTF-powered aircraft resumed in May after Pratt & Whitney reverted to the original seal design as an interim fix.
By mid-2018, Airbus expected around 100 completed aircraft to be awaiting engines and aimed to deliver most of them in the second half of the year, targeting more than 800 total deliveries for 2018. The backlog of parked aircraft declined from a peak above 100 to 86 by the end of June. The 500th A320neo-family aircraft was delivered in October 2018.
Production line expansion
At the start of the A320neo programme, Airbus was producing the A320 family across six final assembly lines: three at the Hamburg Finkenwerder plant, one at Toulouse–Blagnac facility, one at the Tianjin, China facility, and one at the Airbus U.S. Manufacturing Facility in Mobile, Alabama.A seventh final-assembly line in Hamburg, the fourth at that location, opened in July 2017.
By July 2019, with the A321neo accounting for approximately 40% of sales, Airbus began evaluating options to allocate additional production capacity to the stretched variant, including repurposing the former A380 final assembly line in Toulouse. In January 2020, Airbus confirmed the conversion of the A380 assembly line to the eighth final assembly line, dedicated to A321neo production by mid-2022, driven by strong demand for the A321LR and A321XLR variants. To support the A321XLR, Airbus established a dedicated aft-fuselage production line in Hamburg in February 2021 using a former A380 facility, allowing XLR-specific structures to be ramped up without disrupting overall A320neo-family output. In July 2023, Airbus inaugurated the A320neo-family final assembly line in Toulouse.
In October 2025, Airbus opened its ninth and tenth A320neo-family final assembly lines: a second line at its U.S. facility and a second line in Tianjin.
Replacement airliner
By November 2018, Airbus was hiring in Toulouse and Madrid to develop a clean sheet successor for the A320.Although its launch was not guaranteed, it was expected to arrive from the middle of the following decade, after the A321XLR and a stretched A320neo "plus", and would have competed with the Boeing NMA that was, at the time, expected to be launched as early as 2019.
Service entry would be determined by ultra-high bypass ratio engine developments pursued by Pratt & Whitney, testing its Geared Turbofan upgrade; Safran, ground testing a demonstrator from 2021; and Rolls-Royce Plc, targeting a 2025 UltraFan service entry.
The production target is a monthly rate of 100 narrow-bodies, up from 60.
At the November 2019 Dubai Airshow, Airbus CEO Guillaume Faury said the company was considering the launch of a single-aisle programme in the second half of the 2020s for an introduction in the early 2030s.
In June 2023, Faury said work had begun on eAction, a 20–25% more efficient successor to the A320neo family targeted for a 2035-2040 introduction and more conventional compared to the Airbus ZEROe hydrogen project.
At a Civil Aviation Research Council meeting in December 2023, the French government committed €300 million per year to support research and development from 2024 to 2027, including for the CFM RISE open fan demonstrator, while support for hydrogen or electric propulsion receives €65 million.
In February 2024, Faury confirmed that the successor aircraft, dubbed Next-Generation Single-Aisle, would be designed specifically to run on sustainable aviation fuel to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050.