The largest aircraft manufacturer in the world for the third year in a row is the European aerospace concern Airbus. In 2021, 611 passenger and cargo aircraft were delivered to customers, the Dutch-registered Franco-German-Spanish company said on 10 January.
In terms of this indicator, it is significantly ahead of its only real competitor, Boeing, with which Airbus has been fighting for world leadership with varying success for several decades. The American corporation, according to the data released on January 11, delivered 340 liners to its customers.
B737 Max crisis still slows down Boeing
After a record year of 2019, when Airbus customers received 863 aircraft, production in the first year of the coronavirus pandemic dropped to 566 aircraft, but gradually increased over the past 12 months. At the same time, the order book increased by 507 airliners, which at the end of 2021 amounted to 7082 aircraft. Thus, the European aircraft manufacturer is provided with work for at least a whole decade.
Airbus headquarters in Toulouse. Aircraft of the A320 Neo family form the basis of today’s business of the company
At the same time, Boeing’s order book increased by 535 aircraft last year, the American corporation said the day after the Airbus report, recounting orders received, canceled and rescheduled. So, according to this indicator, it seems to have regained its world leadership.
This suggests that Boeing is clearly emerging from a severe crisis caused by the crash of two B737 Max aircraft, due to which this model was banned from operation in many countries of the world from March 2019 to November 2020.
On the other hand, the American aircraft manufacturer, like its European competitor, is still suffering from the effects of the pandemic. It hit the world civil aviation especially hard, so that a number of airlines even had to cancel pre-orders for aircraft.
Airbus A220 regional planes have good prospects
But now optimism is returning to the industry, as evidenced by a significant increase in demand for products from both manufacturers. At the same time, the lion’s share of orders traditionally falls on medium-range aircraft. Airbus has modernized and more environmentally friendly airliners of the A320 Neo family, while Boeing has the same B737 Max.
Just at the very end of last year, in mid-December, the Airbus concern won a very indicative victory. Australian airline Quantas, intending to renew its fleet of medium-haul and regional aircraft for domestic flights in the next 13 years, has made a fundamental decision to completely replace American Boeings with European Airbuses. The volume of the order, including options, which is expected to be completed by the end of 2022, could be up to 134 aircraft. We are talking about both various modifications of the A320 Neo family and the A220 aircraft.
This is how the cabin of the regional aircraft А220 looks like in the advertising brochures of the Airbus company.
These regional jets for 100-165 passengers were originally developed by the Canadian company Bombardier, which then sold the entire program to Airbus. Since 2018, the liners are called A220 and are in fast growing demand. So, in 2020, the European aircraft manufacturer handed over 38 aircraft of this family to customers, and in 2021 – already 50, moreover, received 64 new orders, so that their total number is now 475 aircraft.
A320 and MC-21 aircraft serve the same market segment
The Airbus A220 airliners serve the same market segment as the Russian Sukhoi Superjet 100 (SSJ 100) aircraft. In turn, the Russian MS-21 airliner, which received basic certification in the last days of 2021, is designed for the same medium-haul air transportation as representatives of the A320 Neo family.
June 2021. Another Airbus A321 Neo ordered by Aeroflot is being prepared at the plant in Hamburg for departure to the Russian Federation
In 2022, the Rossiya airline should receive 4 copies of the MS-21, next year, according to the Rostec state corporation, it is planned to transfer 6 aircraft to customers, and in 2027 it is planned to increase the production to 76 airliners per year. For comparison, Airbus customers received 483 A320 family aircraft in 2021.
At the moment, the transportation of passengers for several thousand kilometers within large countries or individual continents on relatively small or medium-sized aircraft seems to be a much more promising direction than transcontinental passenger air transportation in large cars – and even more so in giant liners.
Super Airbus A380: the last five examples and a quiet farewell
This is evidenced not only by the fact that in 2021 Airbus decreased the number of long-haul airbuses from both the A350 family and the A330 family delivered to customers, and the number of new orders amounted to 16 and 30 aircraft, respectively, which looks rather modest.
A striking symbolic confirmation of this trend was (again in mid-December 2021) the transfer of the 123rd double-decked aircraft giant A380 to Emirates from the United Arab Emirates. It became the fifth over the past year and the last copy of this technically extremely successful, but economically and did not meet the expectations of the ambitious program of the European aircraft manufacturer to create the world’s largest passenger aircraft. In just two decades, 251 Airbus A380s were produced.
Airbus plant in Hamburg, 16.12.21. Emirates to Deliver 123rd and Final A380
Now Airbus has different ambitions. “We are preparing for the future of aviation, transforming our industrial capabilities and realizing our roadmap for decarbonization,” said CEO Guillaume Faury in a press release on the release of last year’s numbers. A detailed financial report will follow in February.
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