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The future of aviation (Equipment)

Airbus was the first, it pushed hard, not that it had a choice; they implemented decentralized component production, so as an example, the Airbus wings we manufactured by the Brits, and various countries within Europe had their own aerospace companies.  My guess is that eventually, Airbus will repatriate this process to mainland Europe, but on paper, the Brits are still partners in Airbus.  There are components manufactured all over the world.   The concept of trusted suppliers was started by Airbus, but Boeing followed, mainly to keep clients (foreign countries) happy.  

In America, Mcdonnell Douglas, near the end, tried to expand component production off-shore of its new aircraft (MD95), which eventually became to doomed B717, McDonnell Douglas was right on the aircraft size type (just north of 100 seats) but by then the company had been purchased by Boeing at the behest of the US defense department.   

At least two things are amazing in the aircraft business; the complexity of aircraft design and manufacturing and the way the geographic location of the components is treated. As it purchased McDonnell in the late 90s Boeing discovered the "joy" of having an overly distributed manufacturing process, with heavy language barriers and a stubborn streak.  Let's just say that the Koreans and Americans did not leave on the best of terms, in addition, Boeing didn't believe in the B717 (the aircraft was in production for 6 years only), and stopped manufacturing as soon as they could -- the aircraft was an orphan, and production was "difficult".

The other thing is the source of supplies; 100% of the aerospace aluminum used in the production of Boeing aircraft is sourced in the US (Canada's aluminum is not of sufficient quality), and Airbus gets 100% of its aluminum from Russia (yep these guys).  90% of the subcomponents in a Boeing Aircraft are manufactured in North America.

There used to be a competition for building the biggest aircraft, the B747-100 started the dance in the 1960s and eventually Airbus, its only competitor, built the A380.  The B747 was in production from 1969 until 2022 -- when the last aircraft came off the line.  The A380 first aircraft delivery was in 2003 and the last was delivered in 2021, a few months before Boeing shut down its B747 production line.  

Airbus was eventually canny in understanding that what the market needed most was small aircraft to meet the airlines' real travel requirement which was regional travel and not international flights.  That led to the A320NEO which was a winner in terms of fuel efficiency and noise.  Boeing figured out that it was missing something and created the B737MAX on a crash basis (no pun intended), it lead to some serious errors and Boeing is still recovering from that mistake.

Traffic patterns changed dramatically and quickly because of the pandemic.  A shift in travel patterns that could have taken a decade was compressed into six months.  What is emerging is that international business travel is in serious decline from the pre-pandemic time, and the strong deglobalization movement that is taking place now, is certain to accelerate that trend.  The airlines have to adapt both in terms of equipment and services.

That's the challenge for the airline industry in selecting new equipment Boeing's order book includes nearly 4,000 B737MAX and 500 B787 (and a bunch of B777 and B767),  while airbus its 7,000 A320 and smaller, and 400 for the A350, there's a few orders left for the A330.  In short, the world airline has ordered more than 12,000 small aircraft and nearly 1,000 large intercontinental aircraft.  The airlines have made their choice, and the future is small aircraft 



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