To quote one industry strategy chief summing up the state of play at Le Bourget: “Everyone’s really excited, but no one is sure about what.” The challenges that lie ahead are significant, whether on the stability of the supply chain or the wider world.
Having been to six prior Paris Air Shows, the contrast to 2019 was stark. Those are remembered as halcyon days of a more placid industry, but even in June 2019, all was not well. A serious widebody overcapacity was well underway and the 737 Max was more than a year and a half from being ungrounded.
SCOOP: Boeing will fly CFM’s open fan on Sustainable Flight Demonstrator
Four years (and one global pandemic) later, the exuberance was real. Airbus and Boeing are riding a wave of demand from India that is rapidly transforming the industry, and while there’s an endless temptation to count orders and commitments, both came into the show with huge backlogs. Worrying about supply rather than demand is the problem that this business overwhelmingly prefers to have.
While we expect news to come from the show Thursday, the TAC team finished up its Tour de Le Bourget on Wednesday. Our notebooks are overflowing with fascinating reporting after four days of digging in and we’ll have more in the days and weeks to come. There remains so much more to say about the state of global aerospace as we head for the mid-2020s.
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