With January 2024 here, last week Airbus and Boeing announced their orders and deliveries numbers for last December but also for the entire 2023. Airbus delivered 735 and Boeing 528 aircraft. The split is even wider with orders – Airbus added 2,094 to its backlog while Boeing added just 1,314.
Continue reading to learn more about the two airframers’ overall orders and delivery performance, as well as about some of their most noteworthy orders of the year.
Airbus Continues to Gain Edge Over Boeing
Starting with the MCAS-related Boeing 737 MAX accidents in 2018 and 2019 and going all the way to the recent Alaska Airlines 737-9 door plug accident, Boeing has been facing tremendous challenges in the past few years.
Things weren’t without challenges for Airbus either as the airframer continues to face challenges with some of its aircraft’s engines among other things. Compared with its American counterpart, however, things were smooth sailing for the European airframer.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, this has resulted in the gap between Airbus and Boeing’s commercial aircraft units widening.
In 2023, for the fifth year in a row starting with the year after the first 737 MAX tragedy, Airbus recorded both more aircraft orders and more deliveries than Boeing. As mentioned earlier, Airbus delivered 735 aircraft and recorded 2,094 net orders. Boeing delivered 528 aircraft and recorded 1,314 net orders.
In the ten years between 2014 and 2023, Airbus recorded more annual orders than Boeing nine times with the latter only topping Airbus in 2018. That year, Airbus, quite ironically, recorded only 747 orders compared to Boeing’s 893. In the same period, Boeing held the top spot in terms of deliveries for the first five years, until 2018. Then it slid to the second spot.
With that, Airbus’s total order backlog stood at 8,598 airframes as of the end of 2023 while Boeing’s was, at 6,216 airframes, about 27% smaller.
Airbus’s 2023 Orders Dominated by Indian Airlines
Diving deeper into Airbus’ orders in 2023, the European manufacturer recorded a total of 2,319 orders and 225 cancellations for the already mentioned net total of 2,094. Of the net total, 1,816 orders were for narrowbody aircraft while 278 were for widebodies.
The orders Airbus received in 2023 were dominated by Indian airlines which ordered 750 aircraft in total (excluding any potential orders logged as “undisclosed customer”):
- The low-cost IndiGo ordered 500 A320neo family narrowbodies including 125 A320neos and 375 A321neos
- The flag carrier Air India ordered 250 aircraft including 140 A320neos, 70 A321neos, 6 A350-900s, and 34 A350-1000s
Turkish Airlines, European low-costs easyJet and Wizz Air, Qatar Airways, and lessors Avalon and SMBC Aviation were among other Airbus customers placing major orders in 2023.
Personally, I find the below Airbus orders (and a cancellation) from 2023 to be some of the most noteworthy:
- EVA Airways’ order of 18 A350-1000 (and 15 A321neo) in what is another airline after JAL and Etihad Airways among others signaling a shift away from the 777-300ER to Airbus’s largest in-production airliner
- Air Niugini’s order of 6 A220-100s which will be used to replace the airline’s aging Fokker 100s
- Air Baltic’s order of 30 A220-300s which will solidify the European airline’s position as the world’s largest A220-300 operator
- easyJet’s order of 157 A320neo and A321neos which will not only help the airline modernize its fleet but also increase its overall capacity as the airline continues its shift away from the A319
- Iran Air’s order of almost 100 aircraft from several years ago has been removed from the backlog
Boeing’s 2023 Orders Dominated by Air India, Southwest, and Ryanair
As for Boeing, the airframer recorded a total of 1,456 orders and 142 cancellations in 2023 for a net total of 1,314 aircraft. Of the new (gross) orders, 987 are narrowbody aircraft (i.e. the 737 MAX series) and the remaining 469 are a mix of widebody aircraft.
Excluding undisclosed customers, Air India dominates Boeing’s 2023 order book with 190 737 MAXs, 10 777Xs, and 20 787-9s for a total of 220 aircraft. Southwest Airlines and Ryanair, with their orders of 156 and 150 737 MAXs, are in the second and third spots.
Other not necessarily large but notable orders, at least for me, include:
- Lufthansa Group’s order of 40 737 MAXs which could mean the return of the 737 to both Austrian’s and Brussels Airlines’ fleets
- Ethiopian Airlines’ order of 20 737 MAXs (and 11 787s) which shows the airline’s trust in the 737 MAX in spite of being one of the two airlines to lose a 737 MAX in the MCAS-related accidents
- Japan Airlines’ order of 21 737 MAXs which shows the airline’s commitment to its long-standing relationship with Boeing in spite of shifting away from Boeing widebodies toward Airbus
- Air Niugini’s order of 2 787s which will be used to modernize its long-haul fleet alongside the A220s that will modernize its short-haul fleet
Summary
It is no secret that Boeing has been struggling with delivering aircraft and keeping its customers satisfied over the last few years considerably more than Airbus. That has resulted in the gap between the two manufacturers gradually widening.
Airbus both logged more orders and delivered more aircraft than Boeing for five years straight now, starting with 2019 – the year after the Lion Air 737 MAX crash and the year of the Ethiopian Airlines 737 MAX crash.
In 2023, Boeing delivered almost 30% fewer aircraft than Airbus (528 vs. 735). The gap is even wider in terms of net orders received in 2023. Boeing received just 1,314 – about 37% less than Airbus’s 2,094.
For both manufacturers, Indian airlines (IndiGo and Air India in the case of Airbus and the latter in the case of Boeing) made up a significant portion of their 2023 order book.
