Five years since the pandemic, an uneven recovery persists for aircraft manufacturers

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Embraer on Jan. 7 released its full-year 2024 delivery tally, handing over 203 combined commercial and business aircraft. With that, it topped its 2019 output and became the first large civilian plane maker to report doing so in the post-pandemic era, though its deliveries last year also underscore the broader challenges that have defined the last half-decade and the toll of inflation on dollars earned across the industry.

While not all aircraft manufacturers have released their final totals for 2024, Boeing, Airbus and ATR will not exceed their pre-pandemic peaks for deliveries. Notably, neither will Embraer for its commercial aircraft segment, which remains weighed down — much like Airbus — by aerostructures and Pratt & Whitney engine availability for its E195-E2 and E190-E2 aircraft.

Related: Embraer enters ‘harvest season’ after decades of unceasing development

Embraer delivered a total of 73 commercial jets in 2024, inside of its original 72 to 80 guidance, which was revised downward to 70 to 73 in November on supply chain concerns. The Brazilian plane maker, on the back of a 2024 doubling in its share price, is in the process of pushing its revenues from between $6 billion to $6.4 billion in 2024 to $10 billion around the end of the decade as it accelerates production. The company delivered 179 civil aircraft in 2023, including 64 commercial aircraft.

For Embraer, pushing past its 2019 output in units may also allow it to top its 2019 revenues in 2024 as well. The plane maker has benefitted from a delivery stream of airplanes that command higher baseline prices than their predecessors, including the E2 family and the upgraded midsize and super midsize Praetor 500 and 600 business jets. Yet, underscoring the heavy inflation across the economy, even its top revenue estimate of $6.4 billion in 2024 equates to just $5.2 billion in 2019 dollars, short of the $5.4 billion it earned that year.

The comparatively halcyon days of 2019, which featured its own acute crises for Boeing and airlines in Europe, was the last full year before the COVID-19 global pandemic cratered air traffic demand and upended the factories and supply chains integral to advanced aerospace manufacturing.

From the depths of the pandemic when the overwhelming majority of passenger air traffic had evaporated with global travel restrictions and quarantines, the new normal of airplane and labor shortages, work stoppages, persistent propulsion headaches, higher borrowing costs, inflation and still-fragile supply chains is likely preferable to the parked fleets of 2020 and the existential questions that hung over the industry at that time.

Yet, five years since the pandemic, the aerospace industry across both commercial and business aviation sectors has labored through a recovery that has been anything but steady. Now, the predominant constraints present bigger questions about the industry’s structural ability to surpass 2019’s key metrics.

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