Boeing had a bad year, you must have heard. Well, two bad years, actually, while trying to solve the mess that is the 737 MAX. It is largely thanks to this confusion that, for the second consecutive year, Airbus will overtake Boeing.
The two aircraft manufacturers were stuck in a heated rivalry for decades as the only two companies making large jet planes (for a while) Each one of them normally deliver 600 to 800 planes a year, but because of the pandemic those numbers have declined. ANand because of the 737 MAX specifically, 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 at the top.
In Reuters:
Except for new travel turmoil, industry sources expect Airbus to deliver 550-560 planes in 2020, after reaching more than 520 this week, with nine days of the year still ahead.
But they warned that deliveries are subject to an unusual number of variables and schedules are not immutable. Airbus is unlikely to repeat a record increase of more than 100 deliveries in December last year.
An Airbus spokesman declined to comment on the details, but said that Airbus continues to operate normally.
[…]
Total Airbus deliveries are expected to drop 35% this year due to the impact of the pandemic on airlines, but Airbus has an insurmountable advantage over Boeing, which delivered 118 planes by the end of November, with the 737 MAX landed in that period.
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You can expect this rivalry to continue for a long while Boeing slowly but surely recovers from the 737 MAX disaster and see that it is the only competition in space for the big jet plane is still just Airbus. This is the situation to China C919 is fully up and running, with deliveries scheduled for next year or 2022, at which point things can get really interesting.