Boeing Beats Airbus For Orders

For the first time in over half a decade, Boeing will beat Airbus for aircraft orders in 2025 after an incredibly strong year.

Speaking with France Inter, the plane maker’s Chief Executive, Guillaume Faury, said that its race to catch Boeing in annual orders was unlikely to succeed.

What has been a busy year for Boeing has been made possible by various trade agreements reached between the United States and countries to ease the blow of tariffs, which have been a key talking point in politics.

With each trade agreement reached, there are beneficiaries; these include both countries, and more often than not, the deal struck by the United States with a specific country will involve the eventual purchase of new aircraft types, thereby benefiting Boeing.

Bangladesh’s pursuit of new aircraft has sparked much discussion in recent weeks, as Airbus has pushed the country to consider its proposal for the national carrier, based on logic and the offer’s performance and financial metrics rather than politics.

With that in mind, and given Boeing’s strong year, overall net orders have surpassed 900 for the American planemaker, some 200 more than its counterpart, Airbus.

For Airbus, its complicated ongoing attempts to finalise a deal with China for up to 500 aircraft would have secured it comfortably, giving it the upper hand over its American competitor.

Unfortunately, with the delicate nature of trading with this part of the world, deals getting over the line are always subject to change and can take considerably longer than a typical contract with a Western carrier or country.

Despite this, Airbus would be relatively okay with Boeing taking a piece of the cake this year, as it would feel the last half-decade has allowed it to capitalise on its competitor’s many mistakes and build an incredibly healthy backlog of commercial airplanes that need to be delivered.

Now the challenge will be meeting this demand, as many of its most popular single-aisle jets remain sold out through to the next decade, and planned production rate rises need to happen sooner rather than later. However, these have been masked by persistent delays in this taking place because of supply chain woes.

Airbus To Beat Boeing For Deliveries Though

While Boeing may have enjoyed a more successful year on the order front, the same cannot be said for aircraft deliveries compared to its competitor, Airbus.

Airbus has once again delivered more aircraft than Boeing across 2025, representing not just an irregular occurrence but a common theme, all this coming even despite Airbus not having the year it would’ve expected, given its own supply constraints.

However, even with its own supply chain constraints, it absolutely is not on the level for what Boeing has experienced in terms of frustrations in output rates, most of which, for the American planemaker, however, stem from its own poor decision-making that it has continued for an extended period to feel the repercussions from.

Boeing just recently was able to receive permission from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to increase output rates of its 737 MAX from 38 to 42 every month, a figure expected to rise in the coming years as the planemaker continues to show the meaningful progress it has made on the turnaround of its production processes.

But ultimately, with continued restrictions being put in place, increased oversight and certification delays on jets that do have a substantial backlog, this has meant it has been hard for the business to keep up with Airbus, which, while it hasn’t had smooth sailing, has not faced the same struggles over recent times.

Even with this, Airbus was forced to revise its delivery figure for 2025, now many consecutive years down from the previously expected 820 to 790, following recent concerns about the quality of the A320 family, its most popular plane, which has been shipped up.

For the European manufacturer, there have been many complexities across its day-to-day operation, ranging from quality issues to the ongoing engine supply chain crisis, which has meant many of its planes have been gliders, fully complete aircraft awaiting engine installations.