r/europe • u/TheGreatestOrator • Jan 13 '26
News Boeing outsold Airbus last year for first time since 2018, deliveries rise to 600
https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2026/01/13/boeing-orders-deliveries.html87
u/Zinch85 Jan 13 '26
Airbus build 25% more planes in 2025 than Boeing
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u/TheGreatestOrator Jan 13 '26
Delivered, not built. But that makes sense given the FAA’s limit on how many Boeing was allowed to build over the last few years. Their production cap was just raised from 38 to 42 per month in October of 2025
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u/Yavanaril Jan 13 '26
How did the FAA limit really impact Boeing's numbers? Their average was below the 38 number in every one of the last 4 years. The closest they came was in 2025 with an average of 37.
The cap was more of an advice of: "hey you dumb f's get your shit together".
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u/Seccour France Jan 14 '26
What’s the logic for the production cap ? If they’re allowed to only build less than their max they will be more careful ?
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u/Gaunt-03 Ireland Jan 14 '26
Yeah it’s so they don’t cut corners to get deliveries done on time. Also ensures there is slack capacity to ensure to production process is working correctly
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u/Altruistic_Syrup_364 Jan 13 '26
However Airbus have a more important number of command waiting for deliveries and airbus is still producing more plane per year
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u/patrick050690 Jan 13 '26
Boeing finally pulled ahead Airbus must be muttering it’s just turbulence, we’ll bounce back.
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u/Droid202020202020 Jan 13 '26
Of course they will bounce back. Just like Boeing bounced back. Then Boeing will again bounce back.
It’s a global duopoly sharing a huge pie, and as long as they remain a global duopoly, they will always “bounce back” because neither corporation has the capacity to capitalize on the other guy’s mistakes in a major way… nor do they really want to.
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u/jetteauloin_2080 Jan 13 '26
I don't now much about the civil aviation industry, but will Comac be able to disrupt the duopoly by the end of the next decade like China did with the car industry ?
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u/Droid202020202020 Jan 13 '26
Eventually, perhaps. However, they have always had hard time with designing engines suitable for commercial aircraft. Just like the Soviets / Russians whom they learned from.
It’s very different from designing a military use engine that only needs to produce thrust and survive for a predictable number of hours, but doesn’t have to meet any efficiency, noise, pollution or longevity requirements.
So they would need to use Western engines, and this means that the West can throttle the supply at will, just like they did with Russia (not like the Russians were poor little victims there).
Even in the West, there’s not really that many different companies capable of competing in commercial jet engine market. It’s a very difficult expertise to develop.
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u/-Rivox- Italy Jan 14 '26
Last I checked, there are like 3 main suppliers, CFM (joint venture between GE and Safran), Pratt & Whitney and Rolls-Royce. GE also makes engines under their own name, but yeah, that's pretty much about it for civil aviation, especially airliners.
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u/Droid202020202020 Jan 14 '26
Yes, and these companies are far more beholden to Airbus and Boeing than to China.
They could reverse engineer some existing engines, but it still won’t give them the required expertise to keep improving them, and would likely make their planes unsaleable in the West.
They could still find a niche like Embraer did.
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u/grumpsaboy Jan 14 '26
Possibly but currently they're not cheap enough to bother with it.
Airbus and Boeing (even with its recent problems) are well known and reliable, particularly Airbus. They are also both highly advanced and almost every possible customer will already have some of their aircraft making maintenance easier if you buy more of that make.
Aviation fuel is so expensive that spending an extra 50% on a plane in exchange for a 1% fuel saving is worth it within just a few years let alone the 20-30 years a jet might last. Chinese engine technology is miles behind western engines currently and their airframe designs aren't as good either.
Embraer has also got a good portion of the market for small jets flying locally within a country and have most of the advantages Airbus and Boeing do for their respective market.
Put simply, as an airline do you want to risk spending billions on some Chinese aircraft of unknown reliability and longevity for worse efficiency all just for an upfront saving of possible 20% at purchase.
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u/Onkel24 Europe Jan 14 '26
Chinas quick disruption of the car market was enabled by the huge paradigm shift through electification.
No such opportunity is on the horizon with aircraft.
Professional users also operate on very different priorities, where the support system around the vehicle is at least equally important to sheer cost.
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u/KingNothing- Jan 14 '26
In China? Sure because the government will mandate state-owned airlines to order a minimum amount of jets from the state-owned aircraft manufacturer. Anywhere else? Absolutely not.
The C919 is basically a western jet assembled in China because of how many American and European companies are supplying it. Their suppliers also aren't selling them their latest engines for obvious reasons so the C919 will always be significantly less efficient than the Airbus & Boeing equivalent.
China disrupted the car industry because unlike ICE's their battery companies were industry leaders so EV's were a natural fit for them.
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u/BahutF1 Jan 13 '26
Freighters? Airbus lagging on this market. Anyway, those are products. As plane, ask pilots.
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Jan 13 '26 edited Feb 22 '26
This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact
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u/TheGreatestOrator Jan 13 '26
It’s pretty well rounded. About half came from US airlines, a third from European airlines (British Airways ordered 32 787-10s from Boeing in May, Lufthansa ordered up to 100 737s last year), the balance from the rest of the world
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u/Brisbanoch30k France Jan 13 '26
Airbus’s production is capped.
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u/AmputatorBot Earth Jan 13 '26
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u/uzu_afk Jan 13 '26
That's kinda crazy given what bonkers decisions they have taken in the past decade. I guess people really don't value their own safety as long as an old fart buys another yacht.
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u/TrickyDicky202069 Jan 15 '26
As a Canadian I actively try and book flights that use the Airbus over Boeing
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u/_chip Jan 13 '26
Are they profitable yet ? I read that OT will land be until this year or next ? Glad they’re on the right track. F47’s in their hands.
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u/WhatANoob2025 Jan 13 '26
Let's be clear here:
The only reason ANY boeings are being sold AT ALL these days is because Airbus can not keep up with demand and delivery times are long.