Decemberfrenesi får Airbus att komma ikapp rivalen Boeing

The competition between Airbus and Boeing has been characterised as a duopoly in the large jet airliner market since the 1990s. This resulted from a series of mergers within the global aerospace industry, with Airbus beginning as a pan-European consortium while the American Boeing absorbed its former arch-rival, McDonnell Douglas, in 1997. Other manufacturers, such as Lockheed Martin and Convair in the United States, and British Aerospace (now BAE Systems) and Fokker in Europe, were no longer able to compete and effectively withdrew from this market. In the 10 years from 2007 to 2016, Airbus received 9,985 orders while delivering 5,644, and Boeing received 8,978 orders while delivering 5,718. During their period of intense competition, both companies have regularly accused each other of receiving unfair state aid from their respective governments. In 2019, Airbus displaced Boeing as the largest aerospace company by revenue due to the Boeing 737 MAX groundings, with revenues of US$78.9 billion and US$76 billion respectively. Boeing recorded $2 billion operating losses down from $12 billion profits the previous year, while Airbus profits dropped from $6 billion to $1.5 billion.