Europe's largest
aerospace group, Airbus, has announced a rise in full-year profits and says it
will increase output of its A320 jets.
Net income
rose 21% to 3.6bn euros ($5bn; £3bn) in 2013, a year when Airbus delivered a
record 626 planes. Revenues rose 5% to 59.3bn euros.
Airbus
said it expected to deliver a similar number of planes this year.
It also
announced it would increase production of its A320 jets to 46 planes a month
from 42 by 2016.
"Based
on the healthy market outlook for our best-selling A320 family and following a
comprehensive assessment of our supply chain's readiness to ramp-up, we are
ready to go to rate 46 by Q2 2016," said Tom Williams of Airbus.
"With
a record backlog of over 4,200 A320 family aircraft... we have a solid case to
increase our monthly output to satisfy our customers' requirement for more of
our fuel efficient aircraft."
Airbus
also said it would deliver its first A350 jet to Qatar Airways before the end
of the year.
It
predicted that commercial aircraft orders would remain above delivery levels,
and said it expected group revenues to remain stable.
Last
month, Airbus's main rival Boeing said that it expected to deliver 715-725
aircraft this year, which would be an increase of at least 10% from 2013.
But at the
same time, the US aerospace giant warned that future revenues and profits would
be lower than analysts had forecast.
Source: BBC
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