Airbus Faces Strike Ballots at Its Belfast A220 Wing Plant

On August 26, 2026, the GMB union said it would ballot workers at Airbus‘s Belfast factory for strike action over pay. Unite the Union is preparing to ballot its members at the same site for the same reason.

The plant is the only place in the world that builds wings for the A220 narrowbody, so a stoppage there would reach far beyond Northern Ireland.

The dispute

According to the GMB, Airbus’s most recent pay offer was rejected by 93 percent of members in a July vote, the third proposal the workforce has turned down. The union’s ballot on industrial action opens on September 2 and closes on September 30.

Airbus employs about 1,600 people in Belfast, where they build wings and mid-fuselage sections for the A220. GMB senior organiser Alan Perry said the workers “deserve to be paid a real living wage that reflects their role.”

The A220 began life as Bombardier’s C Series before Airbus took control of the programme in 2018. It seats roughly 100 to 160 passengers and competes with the smallest Boeing 737 and the Embraer E2, and its order book has kept growing even as Airbus struggles to build the jet fast enough.

The twin ballots were reported by FlightGlobal. Airbus has not publicly commented on the dispute. The move comes weeks after Boeing’s engineering union voted to authorize a strike, adding labor pressure at both of the world’s large jet makers.

Why Belfast matters to the A220

Belfast is the sole global source of A220 wings. Every set is shipped to the final assembly lines in Mirabel, Quebec, and Mobile, Alabama, which means the site has no backup supplier to absorb lost output.

Airbus took over the operation from Spirit AeroSystems in December 2025, accepting the loss-making work packages along with a reported $439 million in compensation. It has since been trying to lift A220 production toward 14 aircraft a month by the end of 2026, a target already pushed back from mid-year.

Only weeks before the ballot news, Airbus began a 6,221 square meter (about 67,000 square foot) extension of the Belfast wing facility, due for completion in the first half of 2028. The programme has been supply-constrained by wings, even as some operators trim their A220 fleets.

A walkout at a single-source plant is harder to work around than one at a final assembly line. Wings not built in Belfast are A220s that cannot be finished or handed to airlines, so any sustained action would ripple straight into Airbus’s delivery numbers.