Airbus's revised target to deliver its new widebody A350 passenger jet during the first half of 2014 is "challenging" but "achievable", the company's CEO Fabrice Bregier told the Financial Times.

Bregier said he believed the A350 would not suffer the three-year delay that Boeing's widebody 787 encountered before reaching its first customer.

Airbus would " better, let's put it this way, on the A350 than the market consensus believes we will do," he was quoted as saying, Reuters reports.

Airbus' A350 programme has already been subject to two delays, pushing back the timetable for delivering the new jet to its first customer from the middle of 2013 to potentially the middle of 2014, partly because of problems with component suppliers.