Shares of Airbus jumped 4.06% to €185.08 on May 5 after reports surfaced that AirAsia is set to place the largest single order ever for Airbus's smallest jetliner — roughly 150 aircraft — in a deal expected to be formally announced today at the plane's assembly site near Montreal. Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney is expected to attend the event , signaling the order's political and economic weight. For investors, the question is whether a headline win translates into real financial progress for a program that still loses money on every jet it builds.

  • The Biggest Vote of Confidence the A220 Has Ever Received. The deal would represent the largest single purchase agreement ever for the A220 family.

AirAsia already ranks among Airbus's largest customers, with more than 350 jets from the larger A320 family on order and a fleet of roughly 250 narrowbodies. At list prices of roughly $81–91.5 million per jet, the A220-100 is estimated at $81 million and the A220-300 at $91.5 million — putting the headline value of 150 planes in the range of $12–14 billion before the steep discounts customary on bulk orders.

  • A Money-Losing Program Still Searching for Break-Even. Airbus is trying to ramp up A220 production so it can break even on the program it essentially took for free from Bombardier in 2018, aiming to assemble 12 jets a month in 2026, down from a previous target of 14.

Airbus has said it needs 14 A220s per month to break even, but that threshold has proved elusive — it currently produces only seven or eight. More orders help justify the ramp-up, but profits remain years away.

  • Embraer Was Eating Airbus's Lunch. Embraer's competing E2 family won a campaign with Finnair in March and outsold the A220 three-to-one last year.

The A220 order book had slowed significantly, with 2024 being net negative. A 150-jet commitment from a marquee low-cost carrier reverses that narrative and shores up long-term backlog, which stood at 458 jets at the end of March across more than 30 customers.

  • The Real Constraint Isn't Demand — It's Delivery. Airbus has struggled with supplier and labor issues, while Pratt & Whitney disclosed a major engine defect in 2023 caused by contaminated powder metal, leading some carriers to ground or sell off A220 fleets entirely. An order book filled with jets you can't deliver fast enough doesn't pay dividends. That gap leaves the announcement doing two jobs at once: locking in a marquee sale and showing whether the A220 can keep attracting commitments while Airbus works through production bottlenecks.