Airbus has been swamped with orders for the long-range version of the A320neo family, the A321XLR, which has been a runaway success going by the order book it carries at the moment since it was launched at the Paris Airshow 2019. The Airbus A321 is the stretched version of the A320, carrying more passengers obviously.

Till so far, the Airbus A321 and its various variants were assembled at the Hamburg facilities of Airbus, but with the production at Hamburg not keeping up to speed with demand and having had exclusivity on the A321 for so long, Airbus was looking at other options last year to expand their A321 capabilities. The Mobile, Alabama in the US already assembles some A321s, but there is still a lot of demand to go through. Airbus has had 3255 A321neos in various variants on orders as of December 2019 and only 290 delivered.

Now, Airbus has decided to create new A321 production capabilities at its site in Toulouse. By mid-2022, the current A380 Lagardère facility in Toulouse will accommodate a digitally-enabled A321 line as a step to modernise the A320 production system in Toulouse. Toulouse was selected for several reasons such as overall competitiveness, time to market, investment cost, available floor space and resources. The decision has been communicated to Airbus’ social partners.

IndiGo, Vistara and Air India are some of the Indian customers of the A321 in its various variants. Vistara will be receiving its first A321neo this year.