The Aerospace Recovery Is Still Going Strong

Apprentice aircraft maintenance engineers work underneath large jet engine

(Image credit: Getty)

published 6 August 2023

Manufacturing was hit hard by the pandemic, and its rebound will be marked by ups and downs. To help you understand what is going on and what we expect to happen in the future, our highly-experienced Kiplinger Letter team will keep you abreast of the latest developments and forecasts (Get a free issue of The Kiplinger Letter or subscribe). You'll get all the latest news first by subscribing, but we will publish many (but not all) of the forecasts a few days afterward online. Here’s the latest...

Halfway through the year, the aerospace recovery is still going strong. But Airbus is outpacing U.S. rival Boeing. Through June of this year, Airbus netted 1,044 new aircraft orders, roughly quadruple the 259 orders the European planemaker took in the first half of last year. By contrast, Boeing has scored only 415 new orders, versus 186 during the same period in 2022.

Both companies will continue to see increases in new orders this year, though Boeing continues to slide into a distant second place in market share. So, their backlogs of unfilled orders keep expanding. Airbus: 7,967, versus 7,046 in June 2022. Boeing: 4,879, up from 4,239 at this point last year.

Subscribe to Kiplinger’s Personal Finance

Be a smarter, better informed investor.

Save up to 74%

https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/hwgJ7osrMtUWhk5koeVme7-200-80.png

Sign up for Kiplinger’s Free E-Newsletters

Profit and prosper with the best of expert advice on investing, taxes, retirement, personal finance and more - straight to your e-mail.

Profit and prosper with the best of expert advice - straight to your e-mail.

The bigger question is how quickly the planemakers can increase deliveries to customers amid ongoing supply chain issues. Both Airbus (316 first-half deliveries, versus 295 in 2022) and Boeing (266 first-half deliveries, compared with 216 in 2022) have made some progress in this area and are opening new production facilities to speed up the process. But with certain components and materials (semiconductors, titanium, etc.) still strained, it will not always be smooth sailing.

This forecast first appeared in The Kiplinger Letter, which has been running since 1923 and is a collection of concise weekly forecasts on business and economic trends, as well as what to expect from Washington, to help you understand what’s coming up to make the most of your investments and your money. Subscribe to The Kiplinger Letter.

Housiaux covers the White House and state and local government for The Kiplinger Letter. Before joining Kiplinger in June 2016, he lived in Sioux Falls, SD, where he was the forum editor of Augustana University's student newspaper, the Mirror. He also contributed stories to the Borgen Project, a Seattle-based nonprofit focused on raising awareness of global poverty. He earned a B.A. in history and journalism from Augustana University.