Airbus will once again be the world’s largest aircraft manufacturer

Boeing had a bad year, you may have heard. Well, bad years, really, because he’s trying to sort out the mess the 737 MAX is. It is in large part thanks to this mess that, for the second year in a row, Airbus will overtake Boeing.

The two aircraft manufacturers were locked in a fiery rivalry for decades as the only two companies which manufacture large airliners (for the moment). They each typically deliver 600 to 800 planes a year, but due to the pandemic those numbers are dropping. AAnd because of the 737 MAX in particular, those numbers are very low for Boeing.

Which means Airbus will deliver more planes this year than Boeing, as it did in 2019, when Airbus won the title and ended a seven-year race for Boeing to the top.

Of Reuters:

Barring another widespread travel disruption, industry sources expect Airbus to deliver 550-560 planes in 2020 after hitting over 520 this week, with nine days of the year still at Browse.

But they warned that deliveries are subject to an unusual number of variables and that schedules are not set in stone. Airbus is unlikely to repeat a record increase of more than 100 deliveries in December last year.

An Airbus spokesperson declined to comment on the details, but said Airbus was continuing to operate normally.

[…]

Airbus total deliveries are expected to fall 35% this year due to the impact on airlines of the pandemic, but Airbus has an insurmountable lead over Boeing, which delivered 118 planes until the end of November, the 737. MAX being immobilized during this period.

You can expect this rivalry to continue for a while. long, as Boeing slowly but surely recovers from the 737 MAX disaster and sees that his only the competition in the large jet airliner space is still just Airbus. This is the situation until China The C919 is fully operational, with deliveries expected next year or 2022, when things could get really interesting.