With the first half of 2023 coming to a close, this week’s FlightFriday examines first-half deliveries for the two leading commercial aircraft manufacturers.
Looking all the way back from 2019 to 2023, all first halves have been impacted in some significant way.
In 2019, Boeing was impacted with the grounding of the 737 MAX after two tragic accidents in late 2018 and early 2019. As a result, Boeing delivered about a third as many narrowbody aircraft compared to Airbus.
With the COVID outbreak during the first half of 2020, along with the MAX still being grounded, deliveries were heavily impacted. The “bright star” in the first half of 2020 was Boeing widebody deliveries. With Boeing having the 777F as an offering, this helped bolster their widebody delivery numbers, as deliveries continued throughout the pandemic due to the uptick in air freight demand and the lack of passenger aircraft belly capacity.
With the move away from the pandemic outbreak, a vaccine, and the recertification of the MAX, 2021started to trend upwards in terms of delivery numbers. However, Airbus narrowbody numbers were still 20% down compared to 2019, but Boeing’s narrowbodies were back at 2019 delivery rates.
Widebody delivery numbers in 2022 were impacted with the 787 delivery pause, leading to Airbus delivering more widebody aircraft compared to Boeing, which is the only time in this data set that that dynamic occurs.
With the first half of 2023 now concluded, we can see that supply chain and engine issues are still depressing the delivery numbers. Boeing still have nearly 80 787s built that need to be re-worked prior to delivery, alongside the 180 pre-2023 build MAX aircraft that are awaiting delivery, 60% of which are destined for China.
This data was put together using Aviation Week's Fleet Discovery tool.
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