Airbus Is Pulling Ahead as Boeing’s Troubles Mount

Airbus cemented its position last week as the world’s biggest plane maker for the fifth straight year, announcing that it had delivered more aircraft and secured more orders than Boeing in 2023. At the same time, Boeing was trying to put out 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 two aviation rivals, Airbus has pulled far ahead.

“What used to be a duopoly has become two-thirds Airbus, one-third Boeing,” said Richard Aboulafia, the 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,” he said. “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 two 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’s edge is likely to sharpen. Airlines are embarking on massive expansions of their fleets to meet a postpandemic surge in the demand for global air travel, and are 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 its chief executive, Guillaume Faury, said the company had 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.