Another super year for Airbus: so it outperformed Boeing, despite A380 'failure'
Barring any twists and turns, what is about to enter its final quarter is shaping up to be another year [...]
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Barring twists and turns, what is about to enter its final quarter is shaping up to be another triumphant year for Airbus, in the now more than 30-year (before there was no match) challenge pitting the European manufacturer against American Boeing.
Everything changes with the A320
A competition that, after the years (second half of the 1970s and 1980s) of the A300 and A310, which we might call 'pioneering,' came into its own with the announcement (in the mid-1980s) by Airbus of the A320.
The plane, which would in time become a 'family' of aircraft with capacities between 110 seats (A318) and 200 seats (A321), was The first to boast 'fly-by-wire' technology which eliminated hydraulic control systems, provided significant fuel savings, and boasted a wider fuselage than its closest in-house competitor Boeing, the 737.
The success was immediately resoundingespecially among European airlines, and definitely put Airbus in the elite of the world's commercial aircraft manufacturers.
The debut, in the early 1990s, of the Airbus A330 biget and A340 quadriget, propelled Toulouse into the long-haul dimension, with growing success that disrupted the de facto monopoly Boeing had enjoyed up to that point (with the only exceptions being the DC-10 and McDonnell Douglas's own MD-11).
Even in the early years of the new millennium, the figures for orders received annually by the American manufacturer and the European consortium were close, just over 1,000 units for the former and just under for the latter. 2007 was a particularly lucky year for both with more than 1,400 orders received, but for Boeing it also marked the first overtaking at the hands of Airbus: 1,423 orders arrived in Everett in those 12 months, compared with 1,458 received in Toulouse.
2008/2009 was a two-year dry spell due to the 2008 global economic crisis. Then, in 2011, Airbus literally filled up with 1,608 orders received compared to Boeing's 921. What had happened? That the previous year, they launched the A320neo (new engine option) in Toulouse, which caused requests for the European bireactor to skyrocket from 452 in 2010 to 1,470 that year. Boeing made up for it the following year after launching the 737MAX in 2011 and distancing Airbus by more than 400 orders: 1,339 versus 914.
But from 2013 onward Airbus took the lead in orders (also setting, in 2014, its all-time record with 1,796 orders received) and did not let go of it for the next ten years, with the only exceptions being 2018 and 2021.
Particularly humbling, for the Everett-based firm, were the 2019 results in which it brought home the pittance of 246 orders (a figure to find which one had to go back to the 1970s), compared to the 1,131 received by Airbus. A collapse of the 80%, compared to 2018, due to the Grounding of the Boeing 737 MAX following the two crashes of October 2018 (Lion Air) and Ethiopian Airlines (March 2019) that involved two examples of that model. In a single year, requests for the MAX plummeted by 91%, from 837 in 2018 to 69 in 2019.
The bottom, Boeing would hit the following year when, following the 'grounding' of the MAX that would last until December of that year, and the Covid pandemic, just 184 requests for new airplanes arrived in Everett, compared to the (still very few) 383 received in Toulouse.
The role of the A380
In the evolution of Airbus from a supporting role to a leading role, the largest commercial aircraft ever built, the A380, also played a major role.. In terms of sales, the 'double decker' did not break through, stopping at 'just' 251 built (over half of which were purchased by Emirates). But it did contribute substantially to the establishment of the Airbus brand, after for forty years it had been Boeing that held the title of builder of the giant of the skies par excellence, the Boeing 747 not surprisingly nicknamed the Jumbo.
In this regard, it should be emphasized how, in the U.S. manufacturer's less-than-stellar performance in terms of sales, poor strategic choices, such as that of the 747-8 or that of not 'evolving' the Boeing 757, preferring instead to 'upsize' the 737 MAX to the -10 series (which even today, six years after its launch, has still not been certified), have weighed.
The "war" in 2023
Coming to the current year, as of August 31, the gap between the two manufacturers already appeared unbridgeable: 1,257 orders (from 26 customers) for Airbus versus 624 (from 22 customers) for Boeing.
Significantly playing in favor of the former was the order received last June from the Indian low-cost Indigo for 500 A320 family aircraft (125 A320neo and 375 A321neo), that obtained by Air India for 250 aircraft (140 A320neo, 70 A321neo, 34 A350-1000 and 6 A350-900), that from Wizz Air for 75 A320neo and A321neo, and from Qatar Airways for 73 A321neo.
On the Boeing front, the highlights of the year are the 220 orders received from Air India (190 737 MAX, 20 787-9s, 10 777Xs) and the 30 each from Saudia (787-9 and 787-10) and Riyadh Air (787-9).
Airbus 'leads' the current year as well on the delivery front: 433 (to 77 customers) versus 344 (to 49 customers).
Finally, on the backlog front, that is, orders yet to be 'filled', it is still the European manufacturer that leads the dance with 7,934 aircraft yet to be delivered (including 7,308 of the A220/320 family, 484 A350s, 232 A330s) against 5,596 (including 4,372 B737s, 104 B767s, 434 B777s and 686 B787s).
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