The sharp decline in commercial aircraft shipments by Airbus and Boeing in the first nine months of the year has prompted ADS, the UK trade organization representing the aerospace sector, to revise downward its forecast for 2019 deliveries by the world’s two largest airframers for a second time, now to 1,164 units. At the start of the year, it projected a buoyant outlook and had predicted that Airbus and its U.S. counterpart jointly would deliver 1,709 aircraft in 2019—and eclipse the 2018 total of 1,618 aircraft. However, in July it lowered the forecast by 300, to 1,489 shipments, on the back of a dismal first half. Deliveries saw another significant drop—by 37.2 percent—in the third quarter compared with the same period last year, and with just 245 deliveries from July through September, the period accounts for the “lowest third quarter since 2011,” ADS noted in its latest economics briefing, released on Monday. Airbus and Boeing jointly shipped 390 units in the third quarter of 2018. The 2019 third-quarter deliveries consist of a year-on-year 13.6-percent increase in widebody deliveries, from 88 to 100, and a 52-percent fall in single-aisle deliveries, from 302 to 145, mainly owing to the Boeing 737 Max grounding by global airworthiness authorities.
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