Airbus pulling away as Boeing’s troubles grow

Former duopoly now ‘two-thirds Airbus, one-third Boeing.’

Airbus cemented its position last week as the world’s biggest plane maker for the fifth consecutive year, announcing it had delivered more aircraft and secured more orders than Boeing in 2023. At the same time, Boeing was trying to contain a huge public relations and safety crisis caused by a harrowing near-disaster involving its 737 Max line of airliners.

In the long-running duel between the aviation rivals, Airbus has pulled far ahead.

“What used to be a duopoly has become twothirds Airbus, one-third Boeing,” said Richard Aboulafia, managing director of AeroDynamic Advisory in Washington, D.C. “A lot of people, whether investors, financiers or customers, are looking at Airbus and seeing a company run by competent people. The contrast with Boeing is fairly profound.”

The incident involving the 737 Max 9, in which a hole blew open in the fuselage of an Alaska Airlines flight in midair, was the latest in a string of safety lapses in Boeing’s workhorse aircraft — including fatal crashes in 2018 and 2019 — that are indirectly helping propel the fortunes of the European aerospace giant.

As the Federal Aviation Administration widens its scrutiny of Max 9 production, Airbus’ edge is likely to sharpen. Airlines are embarking on massive expansions of their fleets to meet a post-pandemic surge in the demand for global air travel, and considering which company to turn to.

Shares in Airbus, a consortium with factories and offices in several European countries, soared to a record

Friday after CEO Guillaume Faury said the company won 2,094 orders for new aircraft in 2023, the most in a single year. That includes the popular single-aisle A320neo planes, its main competitor to the 737 Max.

Boeing also reported more aircraft deliveries and orders in 2023 than it had the year before, but at a pace slower than Airbus’. The companies together manufacture the vast majority of the world’s commercial jets.

Faury declined to comment directly at a news briefing Thursday on the latest problem with Boeing’s Max aircraft. “We are monitoring very closely everything that comes out of the ongoing investigation,” he said.

Airbus has had its own

problems: During the pandemic, supply chain issues forced it to cut production and fire workers, fueling a loss of $1.1 billion. It settled a corruption inquiry in 2020 for $3.9 billion. And in 2019, it quit building its A380 superjumbo jet after airlines demanded smaller models.

Since the Jan. 5 incident with the Max 9, Boeing’s shares have slumped around 20%, as investors gauge how big a blow the debacle will prove to be. David Calhoun, the company’s CEO, had said he hoped 2024 would be a comeback year. Instead, the company is scrambling to contain the fallout.

Boeing said Monday that it would make changes to quality-control processes at its factory and at that

of an important supplier, Spirit AeroSystems, which installed the plug for unused exit doors that blew out on the Alaska Airlines flight. Tuesday, Boeing announced it had appointed retired U.S. Navy Adm. Kirkland H. Donald to assess the company’s “quality management system” for commercial planes.

While no one was injured, the Alaska Airlines episode revived questions about safety that Boeing had been working to address after two of its Max planes — one in Asia, one in Africa — rashed in 2018 and ’19, killing 346 people. All 737 Max aircraft were grounded worldwide for two years, which created an unusual opening for Airbus to swoop in and take more of Boeing’s business.

Reporting by The New York Times and others revealed pressure inside Boeing to compete with Airbus’ A320neo jet, a fast-rising, fuel-efficient success that caught Boeing off-guard. Boeing’s decision to build the Max as a variation of the 737 because it would be quicker, easier and cheaper than starting from scratch affected the plane’s design and development, playing a role in its troubling history.

“Over the past few years, the economic equation has changed in favor of Airbus,” said Philip Buller, an aviation analyst at London-based Berenberg Bank. “The disruptions that have been affecting the Boeing Max have made it seem as a less-reliable aircraft to have in your

fleet. So the merits of it being slightly cheaper go out the window because the Airbus is a more reliable plane that you can be flying as opposed to grounding it.”

The safety concerns have been costly in other ways for Boeing. The company is saddled with almost $40 billion in debt stemming from the COVID travel slump and the earlier 737 Max safety crisis. That has raised questions about the extent to which it will invest in future-generation planes as Airbus seeks a competitive lead, Buller said.

“If you have $40 billion in debt, and a plane that’s your cash cow is grounded because the door blew off, it’s a sign that management is not investing in the future but firefighting today,” he said.

THE NEW YORK TIMES Airbus has become the world’s biggest plane maker (an example of its models is this A330 flown by Qantas). One aviation expert said the difference between the competency of upper management at Airbus and at main competitor Boeing “is fairly profound.”