Airbus A320neo

In the late 2000s Airbus had to decide how to answer the ageing of its best-selling aircraft without the cost and risk of an all-new design. The answer was the A320neo, short for new engine option: an incremental development that kept the fuselage and most of the aircraft and changed what weighs most on an airline's bill, the engines. At the February 2010 Singapore Air Show Airbus said it would decide at Farnborough that summer, and on 1 December 2010 it formally launched the programme, promising about 930 kilometres more range or two tonnes more payload. Development costs were put at slightly more than one billion euros, and the neo list price would be around six million dollars higher than that of the previous model, which was renamed A320ceo.

Two engines were offered: the CFM International LEAP-1A and the Pratt & Whitney PW1100G, a geared turbofan. Both promised 16% lower fuel burn and 20% lower maintenance cost than the earlier A320 engines, although part of that gain is lost when they are installed on an existing airframe. Together with the sharklets, now standard, the package was to deliver a 15 to 20% efficiency gain, and the rearranged cabin allowed up to nine more passengers.

Assembly of the first prototype began in Toulouse on 17 March 2014, the aircraft was rolled out on 1 July and it first flew on 25 September 2014 with PW1100G-JM engines. The Pratt & Whitney engine was certified by the US Federal Aviation Administration on 19 December 2014, and the LEAP-powered version flew on 19 May 2015. EASA and the FAA certified the PW1100G-powered A320neo on 24 November 2015 (model A320-271N) and the LEAP-1A26 version on 31 May 2016 (A320-251N).

Four further models with different ratings followed: the A320-252N with LEAP-1A24 (18 December 2017), the A320-272N with PW1124G1-JM (17 October 2018), the A320-273N with PW1129G-JM (30 January 2019) and the A320-253N with LEAP-1A29 (5 February 2019). The certification data sheet groups all six under the commercial name A320 NEO.

The launch customer was to have been Qatar Airways, but it refused the delivery planned for late 2015 because of the limitations the PW1100G then had. The first aircraft finally went to Lufthansa, which took delivery on 20 January 2016 and flew it into service on 25 January as flight LH100 from Frankfurt to Munich. The first LEAP-powered A320neo was delivered to Pegasus Airlines on 19 July 2016.

Engine problems marked the early years. In 2017 Pratt & Whitney struggled to ramp up production, and Airbus ended up with more than forty finished aircraft parked without engines. In February 2018, after in-flight shutdowns of the PW1100G caused by compressor aft hub and seal issues, EASA and Airbus grounded part of the fleet until replacement parts were available, and Airbus stopped accepting those engines; GTF deliveries resumed in May once Pratt & Whitney reverted to the original seal design. The backlog of parked aircraft fell from more than a hundred to 86 by the end of June, and in October 2018 the 500th neo-family aircraft was delivered.

Three years after its debut, in January 2019, 585 neo-family aircraft were in service with more than sixty operators, led by IndiGo, Frontier and China Southern. Lufthansa confirmed the 16% fuel saving of the Pratt & Whitney engine, rising to 21% per seat with its dense 180-seat layout instead of the earlier 168, while Avianca reported that its LEAPs were 15 to 20% more efficient and quieter. In early 2022, 57% of in-service A320neos had LEAP engines and 43% PW1100Gs.

Since November 2017 the SHARP (short airfield performance) kit has been available as an option or retrofit for short runways; its first users were the Brazilian airlines Avianca and Azul at Rio de Janeiro's Santos Dumont airport. By July 2024 IndiGo had 173 A320neos in service, making it the largest operator of the type, and in January 2025 London City Airport applied for approval to receive it with an alternative approach procedure. In February 2026 Spirit Airlines sold two for breaking up, which became the youngest twin jets ever retired for that purpose.

The A320neo also became the basis of the ACJ320neo, the Airbus Corporate Jets version, certified by EASA on 19 December 2018 on the A320-251N, -271N and -272N models, for 25 passengers and about thirteen hours of flight.