MONTREAL, June 3 (Reuters) - Air Canada still sees “friction in the system” regarding delays in the deliveries of Airbus A321XLR jets, the airline’s COO said on Wednesday, as the carrier starts flights this month with the longer-range, single-aisle jet.
Boeing and Airbus are trying to ramp up production of more fuel-efficient new aircraft, but airlines globally face delivery delays on multiple models, often due to supply-chain challenges and labor shortages.
“On the XLR program, unfortunately, we have
been on the receiving end of several delays in the program, and these aircraft are, you know, the better part of two years late from what we originally anticipated when we made the order," Air Canada's executive vice president and chief operations officer, Mark Nasr, said in an interview.
“It’s not specific to just anyone, but there still is friction in the system and we’ve had to adopt our business to be candidly much more flexible," said Nasr, who spoke on the sidelines of an event in Montreal to welcome the model.
Canada's largest carrier plans to use the XLR on routes like Toulouse and Copenhagen. Demand for European travel remains strong for North American legacy carriers despite rising jet fuel prices due to the war in the Middle East.
Air Canada is also seeing some return of Canadians flying to the United States for leisure purposes, after such travel softened last year and earlier in 2026 due to trade tensions.
“It’s increasing at a slow pace, but it’s increasing,” added Alexandre Lefevre, VP network planning and global sales at the carrier.
Nasr said Air Canada, which uses its smaller A220 jets to serve several markets in the United States, is waiting to see technical specifications from Airbus on a proposed stretched version of the aircraft.
“Once the specs on the aircraft are finalized, we will study them,” he said.
“One of the questions we’ll have to examine is the range of the aircraft, and this is why the technical specs end up being very important," he added. "So we really need the full package of specs to be able to appropriately study it.”
(Reporting By Allison Lampert in Montreal; Editing by Chris Reese and Matthew Lewis)
