Historical Airliner Deliveries

Header

The Air Current wordmark (a link to theaircurrent.com), the eyebrow AVIATION DATA | BETA, the page title Historical Airliner Deliveries, and in the top-right corner three theme buttons, Light, Dusk and Dark.

Latest

One rotating headline from The Air Current with a Subscribe → link.

The figures line

Six figures in one line, then one count per manufacturer: deliveries, years covered, peak year, peak deliveries, manufacturers, operators; then Boeing, Airbus, Embraer, McDonnell Douglas, Bombardier, ATR.

The chart card

Top to bottom:

• the chart title and subhead, each editable;
• the advisory notes;
• the legend;
• the chart;
• the hint line, with a User guide link beside it (this guide, in a new window) and The Air Current logo;
• the year range row: the Years slider, the start and end year selects (with a quarter or month select beside each when the time scale is finer than annual), the Range | Single switch and the presets caret.

View

The section that decides what the chart plots.

• X-axis and chart type: eight X-axis tabs (Time, Customer, Manufacturer, Category, Region, Country, Family, Variant) and seven chart-type tabs (Bars, Stacked, Lines, Area, Share %, Compare, Cumulative).
• Segment by: a menu of Manufacturer, Category, Family, Variant, Customer, Country, Region, Total.
• The time scale tabs Annual, Quarterly, Monthly (Time axis only).
• The Generations | Programs tabs (Family axis or segment only).
• The Historical | Head-to-head tabs with Stacked area, Share % and ● Dots (Cumulative only).
• A caption that states the current view in a sentence.
• The customer row (View: Operator | Buyer with the Buyers: Lessors · Airlines & others switches under it in the Buyer view, Show top N customers, Vol ↑ / Vol ↓, A→Z / Z→A, Name / ICAO / Logo, Cluster groups, Show logos) on customer views, and the country row (Show top N countries, Vol ↓ / Vol ↑, A→Z / Z→A, Name / ISO, Flag) on the Country axis.
• Five utility buttons in the corner: Reset view, Toggle volume labels, Export PNG, Copy shareable link to this view, Embed this chart.

Scope

The section that decides which deliveries count.

• The customer search box (Search airlines, lessors, buyers — Lufthansa, AerCap, easyJet…).
• Six scope pills that open dropdowns: All regions, All countries, All manufacturers, All categories, All families, All variants.
• The chip row that lists what is active, with Clear all.

Historical data

The Overlay series menu of 18 economic series, the overlay color, Show crack spread, Clear, the Dim deliveries slider, and the drop target for your own CSV or XLSX file with its Metric, Split and Roll-up menus.

All Data

A table with one row per variant, with its own Search variants… box.

Footer

The data date, the About this data link (reopens the welcome screen), the User guide link (this guide, in a new window), Report a problem (The Air Current's contact page, in a new window), and Scope, limits by manufacturer and known issues, a disclosure with one card per manufacturer and a short list of notes that apply to all of them.

The Air Current wordmark

Opens theaircurrent.com in a new tab. No effect on the chart.

AVIATION DATA | BETA

A label. Hidden on phones.

Light / Dusk / Dark

What it does

sets the page theme.

Options

Light (white page), Dusk (gray dark page), Dark (blue-black page).

Default

Dark.

The logic

colors only; no number changes. The choice is saved in your browser and used on your next visit.

Interacts with

the wordmark image follows the theme; an embed ignores this setting and takes its theme from the embed code. This guide follows the same setting, with its own switch in the masthead, and its screenshots change with it.

Latest

The newest headlines from The Air Current, one at a time, rotating every few seconds. Hover to pause. The word Latest opens the site; the headline opens the article; Subscribe → opens the subscription page. Headlines refresh every two hours when the page can reach the site; otherwise a saved set is shown.

The figures line

Six figures, then one per manufacturer. All but one follow the population.

• deliveries — the population total: every delivery inside the year range that passes the Scope filters, the legend hides of manufacturer, category, family and variant, and the time scale. At the Quarterly and Monthly scales only periods inside the window count, and a delivery with no recorded quarter or month is left out.
• years covered — the slider's start and end year. It does not test whether those years hold deliveries, and it ignores a quarter or month bound.
• peak year and peak deliveries — the year with the most deliveries in the population, and that count. At the Quarterly and Monthly scales a year sums only its periods in the window.
• manufacturers — the number of manufacturers selected in Scope. It does not change when a manufacturer is hidden from the legend or when Compare shows two.
• operators — the number of distinct operators among the deliveries on the chart: it follows the Scope, the year range, the time scale, legend hides and a customer selection (a selected buyer counts the airlines it placed aircraft with). Airbus deliveries before 2002 and Embraer's deliveries carry no operator and add none.
• Boeing … ATR — each manufacturer's share of the population. A manufacturer hidden from the legend shows 0.

Welcome screen

Shown once per browser on first load, and again from About this data in the footer. It states the total, the number of manufacturers and variants, each manufacturer's years, the coverage matrix (Manufacturer · Years · Annual · Quarterly · Monthly · Operator · Buyer, with full, partial and absent marks), and which months the current year covers. Close it with Explore the data, the ×, a click outside, or Escape. The User guide link beside the button opens this guide in a new window. Nothing in it changes the chart.

Where you left off

A prompt that appears when you return after 30 minutes or more. Resume ▶ restores your last x-axis, segment, chart type and time scale; Reset to defaults discards them. Filters, customers, the year range and legend hides are not saved. Returning within 30 minutes starts from the defaults.

Footer

Data: The Air Current • Last Updated: the delivery file's date. About this data reopens the welcome screen; User guide opens this guide in a new window; Report a problem opens The Air Current's contact page in a new window, for an error in the data or in how the chart works. Scope, limits by manufacturer and known issues opens six cards, one per manufacturer, each with its years, what the dataset carries and a Limits: line, then four notes that apply to every manufacturer: the current year is year-to-date, names are the names at delivery, countries are today's states, and sale-and-leasebacks show the airline as buyer.

Error banners

An amber banner at the top names anything that failed to load or draw and what it means for the chart; × dismisses it. A red banner names a manufacturer whose delivery records failed to load; totals still count, but that manufacturer's customer detail is missing until you reload.

Keyboard shortcuts

Active when no text field has focus and no modifier key is held. Shortcuts are off in embeds.

X-axis and chart type: Time

What it does

one bar per period.

Options

periods at the current time scale.

Default

selected.

The logic

each bar sums the population's deliveries in that year, quarter or month; the window comes from the year range.

Interacts with

the only axis on which Lines, Area, Compare and Cumulative are available, and the only one that shows the time scale tabs.

X-axis: Customer

What it does

one bar per customer.

Options

the top N customers by volume (default 10), plus "Other" when the segment is Customer, and in the Operator view an Undisclosed bar after them for the deliveries whose record names no operator. Undisclosed opens hidden: its pill stays in the key, switched off, and the note under the chart counts the deliveries and says how to show them; click the pill to draw the bar. Its Open details → lists those deliveries with the buyer that took them.

The logic

operators in the Operator view; buyers of record in the Buyer view, narrowed by the Buyers filter in Scope. The customer row appears.

Interacts with

Segment by Customer is unavailable here; Lines, Area, Compare and Cumulative are unavailable; choosing this tab with Segment by Customer active falls back to Manufacturer.

X-axis: Manufacturer

One bar per manufacturer in Scope, in a fixed order. With Segment by Manufacturer active, the segment falls back to Family.

X-axis: Category

One bar per active category: Single-Aisle, Widebody, Regional, Regional Turboprop, Business Jet. With Segment by Category active, the segment falls back to Family.

X-axis: Region

One bar per operator region (North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, Middle East, Latin America, Africa) plus Undisclosed for deliveries whose record names no country. Deliveries with no record at all are not drawn; the note under the chart counts them. With Segment by Region active, the segment falls back to Manufacturer.

X-axis: Country

The top N operator countries (default 10) plus Other and Undisclosed. The country row appears. With Segment by Country or Region active, the segment falls back to Manufacturer.

X-axis: Family

One bar per active family, or per program when Programs is on. The Generations | Programs tabs appear. Segment by Family, Manufacturer or Category falls back to Variant.

X-axis: Variant

One bar per active variant, sorted by volume, with no top-N limit. Segment by Variant, Family, Manufacturer or Category falls back to Total.

Chart type: Bars

Side-by-side bars, one per segment at each x position. Always available.

Chart type: Stacked

Segments stacked into one bar per x position. Default. Always available.

Chart type: Lines

One unstacked line per segment. Time axis only.

Chart type: Area

Stacked area. Time axis only.

Chart type: Share %

Each x position scaled to 100%, so a segment reads as its share of that period. Unavailable with Segment by Total. The y-axis reads 0–100%.

Tip

the measurement panel is not meaningful in Share % (it reads the 100% totals).

Chart type: Compare

Two manufacturers mirrored above and below the axis.

Options

the Compare: row above the chart selects the left and right manufacturer (default Boeing vs Airbus) and a Breakdown: of Total, By Category, By Family or By Variant.

The logic

the two named manufacturers times the category scope; the Manufacturer pill, a manufacturer legend hide and the family or variant scope do not apply, because a family belongs to one manufacturer. Customer and geography filters do apply. The subhead and the figures line count the pair.

Interacts with

needs the Time axis and Segment by Manufacturer; the Breakdown choice is not carried by a shared link.

Chart type: Cumulative

Running totals per segment.

Options

Historical (a calendar axis, each line running from its first period) or Head-to-head (each line re-pegged to start at its own first delivery, the x-axis counting elapsed periods); Stacked area (Historical only) stacks the running totals; Share % (Historical only) shows the cumulative mix as 100%; ● Dots adds point markers to line renders.

Default

Historical, lines, no dots.

The logic

the subhead count is the sum of each series' final value. Time axis only. The measurement panel's Σ row is omitted in Cumulative.

Segment by

What it does

chooses what the colors split each bar into.

Options

Manufacturer (default), Category, Family, Variant, Customer, Country, Region, Total (one series, tagged "none"). Options that cannot pair with the current X-axis are grayed.

The logic

segments are summed within each bar; a segment hidden from the legend leaves the population for manufacturer, category, family and variant. Customer shows the top N customers plus Other (N) and Undisclosed; on the Time, Manufacturer, Category, Region and Country axes it first asks where to start (see the holding screen). Country and Region list every country or region plus Undisclosed with no top-N.

Interacts with

Share % needs a segment; Compare needs Manufacturer; the Family segment shows the Generations | Programs tabs; the Customer segment shows the customer row.

Annual / Quarterly / Monthly

What it does

the width of each period on the Time axis.

Default

Annual.

The logic

Annual marks the current year as year-to-date until December's deliveries land: its bar is labelled 2026 YTD, and a subhead whose range reaches it adds "(2026 through September)" — the last month any manufacturer has reported. Quarterly ends at the last quarter with data (Q3 2026) and leaves out deliveries that carry no quarter — Airbus 1974–2001 (annual totals only) and the Embraer deliveries reported annually. Monthly ends at the last month with data (September 2026), leaves out Embraer entirely (it reports by quarter) and caps the window at 20 years, keeping the most recent. The gray note above the chart names what each scale leaves out, with counts.

Interacts with

the year row gains a quarter or month select beside each year; the tabs show only on the Time axis, but the chosen scale stays in force on every other axis until you return to Time and change it.

Tip

at Monthly the window holds 20 years, so All years in the presets draws every month since 1958 and is slow.

Generations / Programs

Shown with the Family axis or segment. Generations (default) keeps each family its own bar or series; Programs rolls generations into their type-certificate program (737 Classic, NG and MAX become one 737 bar) and the title says "program". Carried by the link as prog=1.

The caption

The serif line under the selectors ("Showing Time series of deliveries 1958–2026, segmented by manufacturer.") states the current combination, and on the Country and Variant axes adds a tip to narrow the Scope. On a combination that is not available it reads "This combination is not available yet."

Customer row: Show top N customers

A slider from 1 to the number of customers in scope (at most 50).

Default

10. The rest of the population goes to Other (N). If you have picked customers by hand, moving it asks Switch to Top customers? and clears the picks on confirmation; the reverse pick, a customer added in Scope while the customer chart shows the top N after you asked for it, asks Switch to manual selection?. Cancel, Escape or a click outside keeps the current mode. Carried as top=; a hand-typed value above 50 is clamped to 50. When the scope holds fewer customers than the number you chose, the slider shows how many there are and the subhead names that many ("the top 3 operators in Iceland", "the top operator in Macau"); your number comes back when the scope widens.

Customer row: Vol ↑ / Vol ↓ and A→Z / Z→A

Sort of the customer bars or segments.

Default

Vol ↑ (smallest first on the axis and at the bottom of a stack). Click the active label to flip it. Carried as csort=.

Customer row: Name / ICAO / Logo

The axis label format on the Customer axis.

Default

automatic — names, never cut short with an ellipsis: when a name is too wide for its bar it drops a trailing "Airlines", "Airways" or "Air Lines" (unless that would match another name on the axis) or wraps onto a second line, and the whole axis steps down a type size (11, 10, 9 px) before giving up. When the names still do not fit, the axis switches to three-letter ICAO codes if every customer on it has a code (a dashed underline under ICAO shows the switch), otherwise the names turn vertical, whole — never a mix of codes and names. Click Name to keep names whatever the width. In ICAO, a customer without a code shows its name the same way. Logo draws each airline's mark sized to its column, so even 50 customers on a desktop screen each show a small mark; when the columns are too narrow for any mark to read (a phone, or a narrow window), the row says so and suggests a wider screen, fewer customers or the Name / ICAO labels. Not carried by the link.

Customer row: Cluster groups

What it does

rolls an airline family's carriers and its lineage into one bar or segment under the current name.

Default

off.

The logic

with it on, American Airlines is one bar carrying TWA, US Airways, Piedmont, America West, PSA and American Eagle, the carriers it absorbed as well as the ones it owns; AerCap as a buyer is one bar carrying ILFC, GECAS and NAS. Turn it off to see each on its own. Carried as clus=1.

Customer row: Show logos

Puts each customer's logo at the left of its name in the key above a customer-segmented chart, and in the exported image. The toggle appears only when Segment by is Customer.

Default

off. A customer without a logo shows its name alone. Carried as lgl=1.

Country row: Show top N countries

1 to 50; default 10; the rest go to Other. Carried as cotop=; a hand-typed value above 50 is clamped to 50.

Country row: Vol ↓ / Vol ↑ and A→Z / Z→A

Sort of the country bars; default Vol ↓. Other and Undisclosed stay at the end. Carried as cosort=.

Country row: Name / ISO and Flag

Label format (country name or ISO code) and whether a flag precedes it; default Name with Flag on. Every bar keeps its label: with Name, a name too wide for its bar wraps onto a second line, then the whole axis switches to flag and ISO code and steps down a type size, then turns vertical; only when even a vertical 8 px label cannot fit (fifty countries on a phone) is every second or third bar labelled, and the hover still names each one. Not carried by the link.

Reset view (R)

Returns the year range, every Scope filter and exclusion, the Operator view, the Buyers filter, custom colors, the custom title and subhead, the time scale, the economic overlay, the chart type, the customer and country rows, legend hides, hidden customer bars, value labels and any measurement to their defaults, on the Time axis segmented by Manufacturer. It does not clear the Compare pair or an imported file.

Toggle volume labels (V)

Prints the value on each bar: the stack total on the top segment, each bar's value in Bars, the total at the highest point in Lines. The y-axis adds room for the labels. Carried as vol=1.

Export PNG (E)

Downloads tac-deliveries-YYYY-MM-DD.png with the title, subhead, legend (hidden rows left out; an economic overlay's series listed after the segments), chart, the data notes shown above the chart (what the scale or scope leaves out, with counts — so a monthly export explains its own total), a source line naming the manufacturers on the chart (bottom left; the economic overlay's credit follows it) and The Air Current logo.

Copy shareable link to this view (L)

Builds a link that carries every non-default setting (section 4.7) and copies it; a toast confirms "Link copied to clipboard". The address bar itself never changes while you work.

Embed this chart

Opens a popover with Theme (Light, Dark, Dusk; default Light), Width (Column or Full width; default Column), Height (360–1200 px, default 560, never below the minimum the popover states for this view) and the embed code, with Copy embed code. The code is an iframe of this exact view; see section 4.7 for what an embed keeps.

Chart title and subhead

The title is computed from the view ("Manufacturer deliveries over time", "Customer deliveries by manufacturer"); the subhead states the population and its scope ("1,087 aircraft delivered to Lufthansa Group, 1960–2026 (2026 through September)", "… 44,569 shown · 7,953 not country-attributable"). It says "delivered to" when every delivery in the selection is operated by the customers you picked, "flown or bought by" when the selection also bought aircraft that other airlines fly ("657 aircraft flown or bought by Lufthansa, by operator, 1960–2026"), and "bought by" for a lessor, which operates nothing ("1,020 aircraft bought by GECAS, by operator, 1995–2021"); the "by operator" or "by buyer" tail names the Operator / Buyer switch. Double-click either, or click its pencil, and the line becomes a field in place: type your own, Enter keeps it, Escape cancels; reset returns to the computed text. A number inside a custom subhead that matches the live count keeps updating. Both are carried by the link as title= and sub=.

Compare: row

Shown only in Compare: the left and right manufacturer selects and the Breakdown: select described above.

The holding screen

When you choose Segment by Customer with no customer selected, the chart shows Where do you want to start? with Show all customers (the top N plus Other), a Region… select and a Country… select (which scope the chart and show the top N there). On the Customer axis with nothing selected it shows Pick a customer to begin with Show top N by volume. When filters leave nothing, it shows No deliveries match the current filters with Reset filters.

Customer row: View, Operator | Buyer

What it does

which party each customer bar or segment stands for; it sits first in the customer row and the chart title follows it ("Operator deliveries by manufacturer", "Buyer deliveries over time").

Options

Operator (default): the airline that operates the aircraft. Buyer: the buyer of record, the lessor when the delivery is leased, otherwise the operator.

The logic

a customer you pick is selected in both roles at once, every delivery it flew or bought; the view only decides how those deliveries are grouped into bars. Pick a lessor with the view on Operator and the bars are the airlines its aircraft went to, with Undisclosed for the deliveries whose record names no airline (Boeing names the buyer only). Switch to Buyer and the same deliveries are one bar under the lessor. Bombardier records name no buyer, so in the Buyer view they are counted in a note, never drawn.

Interacts with

switching never clears the selection or the search box; Buyer shows the two Buyers switches under the tabs. Carried as cvm=lessor.

Customer row: Buyers, Lessors · Airlines & others

Two check switches under the Operator | Buyer tabs, shown when the view is Buyer.

What it does

which buyers of record count in the Buyer view's bars. Both on (default): every buyer. Lessors alone: only deliveries a leasing company bought from the manufacturer (the former "Lessors only"). Airlines & others alone: only deliveries an airline, parent, holding or government bought. One of the two always stays on.

The logic

a filter on the bars, never on your selection: pick Spirit Airlines, choose Lessors, and the Buyer view shows the lessors that bought Spirit's aircraft; the deliveries Spirit bought itself leave the bars. Changing it does not clear the customer selection. Carried as bkind=lessor or bkind=airline; an older bl=1 link still opens as Lessors.

The customer search box

What it does

finds every airline, group, lessor and buyer in one list, whatever the Operator / Buyer switch says. Capital letters, punctuation and accents do not matter: air caraibes finds Air Caraïbes, and s.a.l.e finds BOC Aviation through its SALE era. Each row shows one figure, the deliveries the customer flew or bought, and under the name the two parts: "flew 595 · bought 657". A lessor shows a bought figure only.

Interacts with

every customer filter is an include; there is no control to exclude a customer. A customer filter combines with region, country and buyer-country filters: a delivery must pass all of them.

Customer chips

Each selected customer is a chip with its mark, name and ×. A group or a lineage shows a/m (included members of m) and a chevron that opens Members (each with − to exclude it or + to bring it back; the last member cannot be removed) and, for a customer that carried several names, Names at delivery (each with − / +; the last cannot be removed).

The logic

excluding a member removes its deliveries from the selection; leaving a name out removes the deliveries made under that name. Carried as cust=, xm= and cust=Name@Era.

Active · N and Clear all

The chip row's count of selections, includes and exclusions, and a link that clears customers, member exclusions, regions, countries, buyer countries, their exclusions and hidden customer bars. It does not touch manufacturers, categories, families, variants, the Operator / Buyer view or the Buyers filter.

All regions

A pill that opens the region dropdown: six checkboxes, Show all.

The logic

a checked region includes deliveries whose operator sits in it; region and country includes combine as a union. The pill reads the selection ("Europe", "2 regions", "All except Europe"). Carried as reg= and xreg=.

Region chips

A selected region's chip carries a ⊘ that flips it between include and exclude (the name strikes through when excluded) and a ×.

The logic

an exclusion removes the region's deliveries; an exclusion with no include keeps the annual-only Airbus 1974–2001 volume in the total, an include drops it.

All countries

A pill that opens the country dropdown: a Search countries… box (name or ISO code), the Quick add buttons EU · G7 · G20 · BRIC · ASEAN · GCC · African Union · NATO · Commonwealth (each adds its members that have deliveries; click again to remove them), one checkbox per country with deliveries, and Show all. Two rows are not countries: Yugoslavia (to 1992) and Czechoslovakia (to 1992) select the successor states' deliveries up to and including 1992; the deliveries keep their modern country on every axis. The list is narrowed to countries in the current scope. Carried as ctry= and xctry= (ISO codes; YU, CSK).

Country chips

As region chips, labeled OP for operator country. A BUYER chip appears only from a shared link that carries a buyer-country filter; there is no control to add one.

All manufacturers

A pill that opens six checkboxes with each manufacturer's all-time total, and Show all.

The logic

from "showing all", checking one keeps only it; unchecking the last restores all six. The totals in this dropdown never change with filters.

Interacts with

narrows which categories, families, variants and countries the other dropdowns list, without changing their selections; ignored by Compare. Carried as mfr=.

All categories

A pill that opens five checkboxes (Single-Aisle, Widebody, Regional, Regional Turboprop, Business Jet) and Show all.

The logic

a category is a shortcut: checking it selects every family and variant in it, unchecking it removes them, and the category reads as checked whenever any of its families is active. Checking a category discards a narrower variant selection inside it. Carried as cat=.

All families

A pill that opens a Search families… box, the Programs buttons (737 · 747 · A220/CS · A320 · A330 · E-Jet · DC/MD/717, each selecting its member families across categories; shown when at least two members are in scope), one checkbox per family in scope and Show all.

The logic

from "showing all", checking one keeps only it. Choosing a family narrows which variants the variant dropdown lists; it does not change which variants are selected. Carried as fam=.

All variants

A pill that opens a Search variants… box, the Quick select: Freighters button (the 19 dedicated freighter variants in scope, across families), one checkbox per variant in scope and Show all. Carried as var=.

Legend rows

What it does

one row per segment; click to hide or show it.

Default

all shown.

The logic

a hidden manufacturer, category, family or variant leaves the population: it drops out of the chart, the subhead count, the figures line, the measurement panel, the tooltip's "% of shown" and the Share % denominator. A hidden country leaves the chart and the subhead but not the figures line. Compare is the exception: it reads the two manufacturers named in its selects, so a manufacturer hidden in the legend of another view does not leave a comparison. The last visible row cannot be hidden. The subhead adds "excl. X", or names the one or two items left.

Interacts with

hides apply to the current Segment by dimension only; Reset view clears them. Carried as hm=, hcat=, hf=, hv=, hco=.

Tip

double-click a row to keep only that segment; double-click again to restore all.

Legend group headers

With Segment by Family or Variant the legend groups rows under their manufacturer, and variants under their family. Click a header to hide every row under it (or to show them all if all are hidden); double-click to keep only that group, and double-click it again to restore all. A header is struck through only when every row under it is hidden; a partly hidden group looks the same as a fully visible one.

Legend swatches

The color square on a row opens Custom color: the system color picker (Click swatch to pick), a # hex field, the house color or the country's flag colors as chips, four shades, and Reset, Cancel, Apply. Colors only; no number changes. Custom colors last for the session, are not carried by the link (except the economic overlay color), and are cleared by Reset view.

Customer pills

On a customer view, a row of pills above the chart, one per customer plus Other (N) and Undisclosed. Click a pill to hide or show that customer's bar or segment (the chart and subhead change; the figures line does not); the swatch opens a color popover with the airline's Primary and Secondary brand colors and Mute this customer; ▾ / ▸ on a group folds its sub-brands into one segment or expands them. Similar colors lists pairs that may be hard to tell apart. Hidden customers are carried as hc=. On the Customer axis Undisclosed starts hidden each time the axis opens; a link of that view carries hc= only when it is shown or other customers are hidden.

Hover tooltip

It sits at the top left of the chart (move it with the dock buttons below). Hovering a bar shows its period and total ("1,899 deliveries · 3.6% of shown": the bar's share of every drawn bar), one row per segment with its value and share of the bar, the lineage of a renamed customer ("Federal Express → FedEx"), up to 15 rows then "+ N more", an undisclosed-operator count where one exists, and the overlay value when an overlay is drawn. "% of shown" excludes the overlay; in Cumulative it uses the final totals. On a phone a tap shows it, and a small × in its top-right corner puts it away (as does a tap elsewhere).

Click a bar

Freezes the tooltip. Its header gains dock buttons (left, center, right; left until you choose, and the choice is remembered) and ×; its foot gains Measure from here and Open details →. Click the same bar again to ring the segment under the pointer. Escape, × or a click on the chart away from any bar unfreezes it.

Drag across bars

What it does

measures the change between two periods. Press on one bar, drag to another and release.

Interacts with

not available in Compare or with fewer than two periods. On a phone, use Measure from here in a frozen tooltip, then tap the second bar; a retouch within 2.5 seconds adjusts the end.

Open details →

Opens the drilldown for the whole bar (section 4.5).

Advisory notes

Gray notes that say what the view leaves out:

• Above the chart, at the Quarterly and Monthly scales, a Note: names what the scale leaves out ("2,824 Airbus deliveries in 1974–2001 are reported annually only…") and ends "The annual view shows complete data."
• Below the chart, on customer views: "Top N customers shown. Change the number or the sort below, or pick customers in Scope." and, when deliveries have no customer-level record, "Not shown — N aircraft with no operator-level data: Airbus 2,824 — 1974–2001, annual totals only; Embraer 5,129 — reported by segment, not by operator." On the Customer axis, while Undisclosed is hidden: "3,544 aircraft with no operator named at delivery … are the Undisclosed bar, hidden for now. Click Undisclosed in the key to show it." Under a customer you picked, the subhead keeps counting those deliveries while the bar is hidden, so "1,020 aircraft bought by GECAS" stays true.
• On the Region and Country axes: "N deliveries not shown — no record to attribute a country…", with a view 2002–present link when the window starts before 2002, and "N shown as 'Undisclosed' — transaction data present but no country resolved."

The hint

"Click a bar to open the year. Drag across bars to measure the change." On a touch screen it reads "Tap a bar to open the year, then Measure from here to compare two."

Axes

The y-axis ends at the first tidy tick above the tallest visible bar, so a hidden series lowers it; in Share % it runs 0–100%. The Customer axis labels read the whole name (shortened by a trailing "Airlines" or wrapped onto two lines when it is too wide, never cut with an ellipsis), then the ICAO code when names do not fit and every customer has one, otherwise the names turn vertical; the Country axis shows a flag with the name, or with the ISO code when the names do not fit, and turns vertical before it drops a label. A second y-axis on the right appears only with an overlay, titled with the series and its units.

Header

The period and scope ("2018 Deliveries", or "Lufthansa Group · 2018 Deliveries"), the airline's mark, and the line "N aircraft · range · Annual / Quarterly / Monthly". N equals the bar.

The summary line

"1,899 aircraft · 5 manufacturers · 1,397 direct · 502 leased · 197 operators · 49 lessors": direct is the itemized count less leased; operators and lessors are distinct names in the bar. Under it, when some of the bar has no customer-level record: "573 of 668 with customer detail · no detail for 95 Airbus".

view: operator | buyer

Regroups the customer tiles by operator or by buyer of record. In buyer view, isolate: all · direct · lessor · group · transfer · private keeps one buyer type.

Reset

Clears the drilldown's own filters, selections and sort (also R).

The period rail

The bar's years, quarters or months as small boxes (empty ones dimmed); click one to keep only that period, click again to clear. Under it, BY <dimension> lists the values of the current distribution with counts; click one to keep only it; the pin holds that list while you change the distribution.

Distribution by

A select (also ↑ / ↓) of customer (or buyer), region, country, manufacturer, family, variant and category; only dimensions with more than one value are offered. It defaults to the chart's Segment by. The treemap regroups: each tile's area is its share, hovering shows "name · N · P%", clicking isolates it. The note under the treemap says what is isolated and how to clear it.

Delivery details

"N aircraft in M deliveries" and a table. Click a header to sort.

• date — day, quarter or year as the manufacturer reports it; nothing is invented.
• customer — the name at delivery, then "→ now X" or "→ later X" for a renamed carrier, and "via lessor" or "for operator" where the two differ.
• variant.
• region — with the historical country where one applies, such as "Europe · Yugoslavia".
• # — the number of aircraft in the row.

Years slider

Two gold thumbs on a rule.

Default

fitted to the data in view.

The logic

drag a thumb to move an end; drag the blue span to slide both; click the rule to move the nearer thumb; double-click a thumb to snap it to the first or last year with data. At the Quarterly and Monthly scales the thumbs snap to periods. The window re-fits itself to the data each time you change a filter, and stays where you put it otherwise. Carried as y=. On phones below 480 px the slider is hidden and the year selects do its work.

Start year / End year selects

The same window as the thumbs, one year apart at least. At the Quarterly and Monthly scales a Q1–Q4 or Jan–Dec select beside each year bounds the first and last period inside those years; the subhead then reads periods ("across Q2 2024–Q3 2025"). Carried as yq= or ymo=.

Range / Single

Range (default) is the two-thumb window. Single shows one year at the Annual scale, or one quarter or month at the finer scales (the latest with data). Carried as ym=single.

Presets (the caret)

This year (the calendar year: Single at Annual, every period of the year at Quarterly or Monthly), Last 5 years, Last 10 years, Last 20 years, All years. At the Monthly scale All years draws every month since 1958.

Historical data: Overlay series

What it does

draws one economic series as a dashed line on a second y-axis.

Options

None (default) and 18 series in two groups, each labeled with its units and start year:

Overlay color

A swatch that recolors the line, its axis and its legend row. Carried as ovc=.

Show crack spread

Offered with WTI or Jet Fuel selected: draws the other of the pair, both in $/BBL (jet fuel × 42), shades the band between them, and adds "Crack spread" to the tooltip. Carried as ovcs=1.

Clear

Removes the economic overlay.

Dim deliveries

A slider, 15–100%, that fades the delivery bars so the overlay line reads; shown only while an economic series is drawn. Carried as sop=.

Your own file

Drop a CSV or XLSX time series anywhere on the chart.

What it accepts

any sheet with a date, month, quarter or year column and a numeric column; the first sheet of the first file; parsed in your browser, never uploaded.

What appears

an Imported overlay row with the file name, its date span, row count and source grain; Metric (which numeric column), Split (Total, or one line per value of a column with 2 to 40 values, at most 12 drawn), Roll-up (Sum, Average or Last per chart period); Clear. The lines take legend rows that hide, show and recolor like any other.

The logic

delivery totals are untouched. A Cirium/Diio schedule export is recognized: its aircraft types are normalized, and when it covers a single airline the chart is filtered to that airline. The aircraft scope is narrowed only when the file covers a single family; otherwise the note names the families in the file so you can match them in Scope. A chart at a finer time scale than the file shows the axis but no points. Dropping a file clears an economic series; choosing an economic series pauses the file until you clear it. Nothing persists past the session and nothing is carried by the link.

All Data

A table with one row per variant in the population: Variant · Manufacturer · Total · First · Last · Peak (the period and its count), sorted by total. At the Quarterly and Monthly scales the columns read quarters or months and the rows follow the chart's own periods. Search variants… filters the rows. The table draws when it scrolls into view.

What the link carries

Copy shareable link to this view writes one parameter per setting that differs from the default:

Opening the drilldown from a link

Add drill= and the bar's label to a link and the drilldown for that bar opens once the view has drawn: drill=1968, drill=Q2+2024, drill=Southwest+Airlines, drill=United+States (or its code, drill=US). It opens exactly what Open details → opens on that bar. Copy shareable link to this view does not add it, and an embed ignores it. A label that is not on the chart opens nothing and says so. A link applies in one pass and then fits the year range to the data unless it names a range. A link that names an X-axis and a Segment by that cannot pair takes the same fallback the tabs apply: x=f alone opens Family by Variant. The address bar does not change as you work; only the copied link does.

Embeds

The embed code is an iframe of the current view with embed=1 and a theme; the popover's Notes option (on by default) keeps the data notes in the embed, and off adds notes=0 to hide them. An embed keeps the title, subhead, notes (unless hidden), legend, chart, a source line naming the manufacturers on the chart and an attribution line linking back to the full page; the legend still hides and shows, hover and drag-to-measure still work; the drilldown, the color picker, the title editor and the keyboard shortcuts are off, and nothing is saved in the reader's browser. The popover's Minimum for this view is the height at which the title, legend and chart stay uncut; a shorter frame scrolls. Full width wraps the frame to span the viewport with a margin on each side.

Browser storage

The page remembers your theme, that you have seen the welcome screen, the latest headlines for two hours, your tooltip dock position, and (for the Where you left off prompt) your last x-axis, segment, chart type and time scale. Nothing else is stored.

Axes and stacking

The x-axis is whatever the X-axis tab names: periods, customers, manufacturers, categories, regions, countries, families or variants. The y-axis counts aircraft and ends at the first tidy tick above the tallest visible bar; Share % runs 0–100%.

• Stacked piles the segments into one bar.
• Bars sets them side by side.
• Lines and Area draw the segments over time.
• Compare mirrors two manufacturers above and below the axis.
• Cumulative runs the totals forward.

Colors

Manufacturers wear their house colors (Boeing blue, Airbus orange, Embraer purple, McDonnell Douglas navy, Bombardier gold, ATR teal). Families and variants take shades of their manufacturer's color. Customers wear their brand color where one is registered, otherwise a fixed hashed color; a gold dot on a legend swatch marks a color you changed. Blue underlines mark the controls that decide the x-axis; gold ones mark scope and segment.

Visual states

• A legend row struck through at reduced opacity is hidden; its series is out of the population (manufacturer, category, family, variant) or out of the chart only (country, customer pill).
• A legend group header struck through has every row under it hidden.
• A dimmed customer pill is hidden; a muted customer is drawn in gray.
• A has-filter pill in Scope is highlighted, and its label names the selection ("Europe", "2 regions", "All except Europe").
• A struck-through region or country chip is an exclusion; the OP / BUYER tag on a country chip says which party it filters.
• The last bar is labelled 2026 YTD: the current year is year-to-date (through September) and its bar grows as the manufacturers report; compare it with earlier years only with that in mind.
• A gap at 2026 for ATR is a held year, not zero: ATR's 2026 deliveries are withheld until the year closes.
• An empty space where a bar should be means no deliveries in that period for the population.

The tooltip

Top to bottom:

• the title — the period or the customer;
• the bar's total and its share of every drawn bar;
• one row per segment, with its value and its share of the bar; a renamed customer shows its name at delivery and its lineage;
• "+ N more" — the customers folded into the gray Other pool;
• a warning line counting undisclosed operators inside the bar, where there are any;
• the overlay's value at this period, when an overlay is drawn.

The measurement panel

Two periods, the totals at each, the change and its percentage, and Σ, the inclusive sum from the first to the last period. Hidden series are left out of all four lines.

• Σ is omitted in Cumulative, where the totals are already running sums.
• In Share % the totals are percentages and read 100 at both ends ("100 → 100 · 0 (0.0%) · Σ 400" across four years). Measure counts on a Stacked or Bars chart.

Sources and coverage

Delivery counts come from the manufacturers' own reporting and from The Air Current's research of public filings. Annual totals are complete for every manufacturer over the years it is present; the detail beneath them differs:

Customer names

How the customers in the files become the customers on the chart:

• Every raw spelling in a manufacturer's file is mapped to one canonical operator, so "AIR FRANCE", "Air France" and "Air France (ex-…)" are one customer.
• Each customer belongs to an entity with a current name, its former names and their years, its predecessors and its subsidiaries.
• Selecting a customer selects its whole lineage: American Airlines reaches TWA, US Airways and Piedmont; FedEx reaches Federal Express and Flying Tiger.
• Bars and chips show the current name. A hover on one year reads the name in force that year ("Allegheny Airlines · now US Airways" on 1975, "US Airways" on 2013); a hover on a bar that spans the years reads the current name with the earlier names and their years under it ("US Airways" / "Allegheny Airlines 1960–1978 · USAir 1979–1996"). The drilldown rows show the name at delivery with the lineage after it. To chart one earlier name on its own, pick it from the search's "only this name" row or the chip's Names at delivery.
• A buyer of record is the lessor when a delivery is leased, otherwise the operator. Bombardier's records name the operator only, so they have no buyer of record: in the Buyer view they are counted in a note, never drawn.
• "Bought by a lessor" means the lessor took delivery from the manufacturer. A sale-and-leaseback happens after that moment and is invisible here: IndiGo's deliveries all read as bought by IndiGo.
• Groups such as Lufthansa Group, IAG and Hainan Airlines Holding are selectable as one.

Mapping conventions

• Boeing's "737-800A" is shown as the P-8A, in a 737 (Military) family.
• Military variants stay in their airframe family: E-3 and KE-3 under 707/720, KC-10A under DC-10.
• The 747SP is its own variant.
• The Freighters quick select counts dedicated freighters only, with the DC-10's convertibles as the one exception.
• Countries follow the operator's home at delivery. Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia are offered as filters for deliveries up to 1992; the records themselves carry the successor state.
• A delivery whose record names no operator, or a leasing company in the operator slot with no airline placed, reads Undisclosed on the Region and Country axes, and as the last bar of the Customer axis (hidden when the axis opens; a lessor's Boeing placements are the typical case under a customer you picked).

Known limitations

• The Quarterly scale leaves out Airbus 1974–2001 and the Embraer deliveries reported annually. The Monthly scale leaves out Embraer entirely and holds a 20-year window.
• A customer, region or country filter drops the Airbus 1974–2001 annual totals, which carry no customer or country. An exclusion alone keeps them.
• Operators in the figures line counts the operators on the chart; like the deliveries figure, it still counts a customer bar hidden through its pill or a country hidden in the legend.
• Embraer's business jets and ATR's turboprops are included; the title's "airliner" is used in the broad sense.

The chart is empty

The filters leave nothing: a customer with no deliveries in the selected families, a country outside a region you included, or a year range past a manufacturer's last year. Click Reset filters on the chart, Clear all in Scope, or Reset view (R).

The total looks too small

A legend row is hidden (struck through), a time scale is leaving records out (the gray note above the chart says which), or the window is narrower than you think (read years covered). Hidden rows return on click; Reset view returns everything.

Two numbers disagree

The subhead follows the chart; the figures line follows the population. They differ when a country or a customer pill is hidden, which changes the chart only: with the United States hidden on a country-segmented chart, the subhead reads "39,369 … excl. the United States" while the figures line still reads 52,522 deliveries. Un-hide to reconcile.

The Embraer bars vanished

You are on the Monthly scale, which Embraer's quarterly reporting cannot fill, and which holds a 20-year window (2006–2026 on a fresh page: the figures line reads 25,921 deliveries). Switch to Quarterly or Annual. The scale stays in force on other axes until you change it on the Time axis.

A link did not reproduce my view

Links carry everything except the customer and country label formats, the Compare breakdown and an imported file. A customer name the data does not know is dropped with a message. Copy the link again after each change; the address bar does not update on its own.

I pressed R, V, L or E and nothing happened

A text field has focus, or you are in an embed. Click the chart first.

The welcome screen does not come back

Open it from About this data in the footer.

"Where you left off" offers a view I did not make

It restores only the x-axis, segment, chart type and time scale; it keeps no filters. Click Reset to defaults if you do not want it.

The page says something failed to load

The amber banner names the file and what it means; reload. If a manufacturer's records failed, totals are right but its customer detail is missing until the reload succeeds.

My browser blocks storage

The theme, the welcome flag and the saved view are not kept between visits; everything else works.