RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – (AFP) Brazilian plane-maker Embraer said Friday, Februry 12th, it delivered 130 jets last year, down nearly 35 per cent from 2019, the latest sign of the heavy toll the coronavirus pandemic has taken on the aviation industry.
“Although deliveries accelerated during the fourth quarter of 2020 relative to the three previous quarters, they were heavily impacted, mostly in commercial aviation, due to the COVID-19 pandemic,” Embraer said in its quarterly deliveries report.
The company, the world’s third-biggest plane maker after Airbus and Boeing, will release its annual financial results on March 24th.
All signs point to a rough year. Embraer reported total net losses of US$728.6 million for the first three quarters of 2020, more than six times its losses for the same period in 2019.
It said it delivered 71 jets in the fourth quarter — 28 commercial planes and 43 executive jets. That was a decrease of 10 aircraft from the last three months of 2019, but an increase of 43 from the third quarter of 2020.
It ended the year with a firm order backlog of US$14.4 billion, it said.
Embraer is coming off a difficult break-up with long-time suitor Boeing, which announced last April it was abandoning plans for a $4.2 billion deal to buy Embraer’s commercial plane division.