2025 Aviation Recovery: What OEM Data Really Shows

Has 2025 been the recovery year we have all been waiting for? The pandemic dealt the industry’s most significant blow in its history—previous shocks, such as oil price spikes, wars, and SARS, pale by comparison.

This chart gives you a sense of OEMs’ first flights, which are production proxies. A couple of things to note:

• The rise in production from the arrivals of NEO and MAX is eye-popping
• The pandemic’s hit is plain to see, but then so is its resilience in recovering
• That recovery also shows how the supply chain

  was thrown off as it lost high-skilled workers who were retired, too soon, the classic overreaction

Because we can visualize you thinking – here’s the chart for Airbus. The item to note above is the typical horizontal S-shape, and at Airbus, that shape turns into a spike in 4Q year after year. The chart does not detail it, but those spikes also reflect the switch from A320neo to A321neo.  This is one of the greatest Airbus stories and also one of Boeing’s biggest blunders.