Airbus Beats Boeing for Deliveries in 2024

Boeing is welcoming its new CEO, Robert "Kelly" Ortberg, into the fold today, as former company head Dave Calhoun steps down. The change of leadership comes after months of safety issues and the recent release of poor earnings, with a core operating loss of $1.4 billion in the last quarter.

The U.S. plane manufacturer no doubt hopes that Ortberg will turn things around. As the following chart shows, Boeing’s deliveries of commercial aircraft faltered in the first six months of the year, according to the company’s reports. The aircraft manufacturer delivered just 175 planes in the H1 of 2024, down from 266 in the same six-month period of last year. In the meantime, its sole major competitor, Europe’s Airbus, saw an uptick in H1, having delivered 323 of their commercial planes, marking an increase from their 2024 H1 figure of 316.

Boeing has been mired in a series of safety issues since the start of the year, following a mid-air panel blowout on an Alaska Airlines 737 MAX 9 jet in January. Prior to 2018, Boeing had been in the lead for deliveries out of the two companies, but this changed following the two deadly 737 MAX 8 crashes of 2018 and 2019, and the ensuing temporary production halt of the model. While the same family, these were different planes than those involved in the more recent incidents and they were caused by different issues. As the following chart shows, both companies saw dips in deliveries in 2020 with the Covid pandemic.

Boeing and Airbus are the world’s two major competitors when it comes to commercial plane manufacturing. While other manufacturers exist, they produce far lower numbers of aircraft than either of these two giants. In a report by CNN, writer Allison Morrow explains that since pilots are trained in either Boeing or Airbus operating systems, it is difficult for airlines to switch planes. With few companies having the capacity to produce large jets, both Airbus and Boeing continue to have a long backlog of orders (8,598 at the end of 2023 for Airbus; 5,591 at the end of March for Boeing).