Commercial Aerospace Production and Engines

Commercial aircraft are the opposite of cars. Programmes sell for decades, cost $10–30bn+ to develop, are built at rates of tens of aircraft a month rather than thousands of vehicles a day, and are bought years ahead: Airbus ended 2025 with a record backlog of 8,754 aircraft after delivering 793 (company, reported). The binding constraint in 2023–26 was not demand but production: Boeing's quality system after the Alaska Airlines door-plug blowout of 5 Jan 2024, which led the FAA to cap 737 output at 38 a month until it allowed 42 in Oct 2025; engine supply, where Pratt & Whitney's powder-metal recall grounded hundreds of A320neo-family aircraft and Airbus said in Feb 2026 that Pratt had not committed to the engines it ordered; and a fragile supplier base, which Boeing answered by buying back Spirit AeroSystems (closed 8 Dec 2025). By Q3 2026 Boeing was delivering more aircraft (161 commercial deliveries in the quarter, the most since 2018) but had pushed a stable 47-a-month 737 rate to early 2027, and Airbus had moved its A320-family target of 75 a month to the end of 2027 (Shared facts; company, reported). This section explains how aircraft and engines are made and sold: the Boeing–Airbus duopoly, backlogs and rate breaks, programme accounting, the supplier pyramid, certification, the 737 MAX crisis and the 2024 door plug, the GTF recall, why engine makers earn their money in the aftermarket, Embraer and COMAC, and the eVTOL busts. Defence primes are left for a later vertical.