On August 29th, the Financial Times reported that Airbus is exploring the sale of its US aerospace business unit.
At the same time, this Franco German joint venture aircraft manufacturer is committed to building a leading enterprise in the pan European satellite field through a tripartite merger.
Insiders have revealed that Airbus is evaluating potential buyers' intentions to acquire its US aerospace business. This business includes a factory located in Florida and Arrow series small satellites. This series of satellites can achieve mass production on a large scale, targeting commercial and government communication, ground imaging services, and also meeting national security related needs.
Airbus acquired the remaining 50% stake in the joint venture Airbus OneWeb Satellites (AOS) in 2024, thereby gaining full control of the company.
OneWeb is a low orbit satellite Internet constellation designed to provide global space broadband coverage. This joint venture was established in 2016 and has built over 600 satellites for OneWeb's first generation low orbit satellite constellation.
The Financial Times reported that Airbus has been working hard in recent years to relocate satellite production from the United States back to Europe, including building 440 low orbit satellites for OneWeb at its Toulouse factory, which Airbus called "another step towards European sovereignty". The relevant order comes from Eutelsat, a French company that acquired OneWeb, a UK company that has emerged from bankruptcy proceedings, in 2022.
Although Airbus has not released specific revenue data for its US aerospace business, according to informed sources, the annual sales of this business are estimated to be in the billions of dollars. The department employs over 200 employees at its facility on Merritt Island, Florida, which is located near the Kennedy Space Center and Jeff Bezos' rocket company Blue Origin. By comparison, Airbus has approximately 11000 employees engaged in aerospace related businesses worldwide.
This potential sale comes at a time when Airbus is striving to reverse its global aerospace business difficulties. Airbus has set aside 989 million euros (approximately 7.732 billion yuan in current exchange rate) for its aerospace business in 2024. In February 2025, Airbus made an additional provision of 300 million euros (approximately 2.346 billion yuan in current exchange rate) for expenses, bringing the total space related expenses to approximately 1.3 billion euros (approximately 10.164 billion yuan in current exchange rate) in 2024.
In October 2025, Airbus reached an agreement with Leonardo of Italy and Thales of France to merge their respective businesses from satellite manufacturing to space systems and services. The merger plan, codenamed "Bromo," aims to better compete with Elon Musk's SpaceX and Chinese competitors. The three parties plan to submit a proposal to the antitrust regulatory authorities in Brussels in the second half of 2026, with the goal of putting the new company into operation by 2027.
Insiders have stated that Airbus has been evaluating its US aerospace business for some time, and this divestment plan is unrelated to the remedial measures proposed to the European Commission by the Bromo merger project to obtain competitive approval.
