Here is one simple lesson to be gleaned from Aviation Week's Top-Performing Companies (TPC Study): avoid overconfidence. History shows that a first-place finish is no guarantee of long-term success. Conversely, even consistently strong performers have a bad year every now and then.

Plagued with massive losses, Finnair is becoming the first European airline to outsource a significant part of its short-haul network. But SAS Scandinavian Airlines, its main rival in the Nordic region, is learning the hard way what can happen when regional partner airlines become unreliable as it too seeks its own financial turnaround.

The order backlog for Airbus and Boeing is now more than 8,000 units and worth about a half-trillion dollars. Their factories will be busy to the end of the decade, smoothing the impact of any order retrenchments that some industry trackers expect in the middle of the decade.

As top-tier defense contractors begin to move away from an era of big-ticket weapons procurements, they are scrutinizing their portfolios in an effort to weed out lower-performing businesses. And one problem area keeps coming to the forefront: low-margin government services businesses.

Airbus jet’s -900 advances even as -800 enters deep stall

Boeing's long-term strategic plan to set up a second assembly site for the 787 took another step toward completion with the initial flight of the first aircraft to be built at Charleston, S.C., on May 23. The aircraft—the 46th 787—becomes the first Boeing jet airliner to be completed away from the company's facilities in Puget Sound, Washington, and the heritage McDonnell Douglas manufacturing sites in Southern California.

When the U.S. Air Force showed only a tepid interest in unmanned aircraft, a small San Diego company, General Atomics, decided to build them on its own dime. So when the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks hit and U.S. forces were suddenly sent to combat guerilla-like forces in the mountains of Afghanistan, the company's Hellfire-equipped Predators were not just a concept—they were in production.

European airlines are suffering. Almost every one of the continent's legacy carriers has its own restructuring program in place to reduce losses, minimize the pain and somehow climb out of the abyss they are in. That's the case for the very big players such as Air France-KLM, Lufthansa or the International Airlines Group's Iberia unit, and even more so for smaller carriers. Hardly any European airline is going to make a profit this year, and if they do, then it's more because of non-flying activities such as Lufthansa Technik.