IATA Warns of Aircraft Shortages and Aging Fleets

IATA released a PR today describing the supply chain issues airlines are facing. They went on to say: Notable points on the current situation include: Delivery shortfalls now total at least 5,300 aircraft. The order backlog has surpassed 17,000 aircraft, a number equal to almost 60% of the active fleet. Historically, this ratio was steady at around 30-40%. This backlog is equivalent to nearly 12 years of the current production capacity. The average fleet age has risen to 15.1 years (12.8 years for aircraft in the passenger fleet, 19.6 years for cargo aircraft, and 14.5 years for the wide-body fleet). Aircraft in storage (for all reasons) exceed 5,000 aircraft, one of the highest levels in history despite the severe shortage of new aircraft. “Airlines are feeling the impact of the aerospace supply chain challenges across their business. Higher leasing costs, reduced scheduling flexibility, delayed sustainability gains, and increased reliance on suboptimal aircraft types are the most obvious challenges. Airlines are missing opportunities to strengthen their top-line, improve their environmental performance, and serve customers. Meanwhile, travelers are seeing higher costs from the resulting tighter demand/supply conditions. No effort should be spared to accelerate solutions before the impact becomes even more acute,” said Willie Walsh, IATA’s Director General. As production bottlenecks continue, new challenges and impacts are being revealed: Delivery delays are compounded by several factors, including: Airframe production is outpacing engine production (which is constrained due to issues with existing engines). This is resulting in newly completed airframes being parked until engines are available. Longer timelines for new aircraft certification (from 12-24 months to four or even five years) are delaying entry into production/service, particularly impacting long-haul fleet renewal. Tariffs on metals and electronics resulting from US-China trade tensions have worsened some supply bottlenecks and raised some maintenance costs. A shortage of skilled labor, especially in engine and component manufacturing, is constraining production ramp-up plans. The fragility of the aerospace supply chain network (often reliant on a limited number of suppliers for critical parts) can become an acute constraint amid economic uncertainty, changing tariff regimes, and tight labor markets. As a result, even small disruptions can be difficult to resolve and balloon to significant production delays. Fuel efficiency improvements are slowing as the fleet ages. Historically, fuel efficiency improved by 2.0% per year, but this slowed to 0.3% in 2025 and is projected at 1.0% for 2026. The situation for the air cargo fleet risks evolving: Converted aircraft from passenger operations are in short supply as airlines keep them in use for passenger operations longer. New-build wide bodies face production delays. Older cargo aircraft which have been kept flying longer to compensate for slower fleet renewal will eventually reach hard limits on their useful life. This news naturally prompts us to consult our models to see whether we concur with these findings. Here's our fleet ageing model, starting with deliveries around 2010. The start date is selected for the arrival of the NEO and MAX. The model allows you to select a world region and an operator. Note that under the OEM name, there's a small + sign; clicking this opens that variable to show models. Selecting any variable in the table updates the chart to the right. We concur with IATA on the shortage of aircraft, and published our own independent analysis yesterday before IATA's note. Our data includes only aircraft delivered since 2010, so our fleets are younger than those in the IATA reports. On page 2 of the model, we address delivery delays. Using the same menus, select a region and operator. The data show that, for several models, the number of delivery days (the number of days between the first flight and the delivery date) increases. Note that we exclude Embraer from the chart as they do not allow us to track first flight dates. In summary, operators are behind in aircraft deliveries post-pandemic. The supply chain has not caught up and may take another few years to reach its pre-pandemic production rates. The fleet not reported in our data is ageing, leading to higher fuel burn and MRO needs.

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