There is a lot of anecdotal evidence about this issue. How about some hard data? We spent the past month building delivery models for Airbus, Boeing, and Embraer’s current in-service programs, and this is what we found. From now on, we will be updating these models daily.
As you go through the charts, note that they are not uniform. The process is still a work in progress, and the amount of data for each program varies. We hope to standardize this and potentially merge all these separate models into one, but that is still considerable work.
The models focus on the period between the first flight and delivery, which we call delivery days. The first flight can only occur when the aircraft is complete, and delivery only occurs after customer acceptance. The number of days between these two events varies considerably. What are the reasons for this? That information isn’t shared, but it is likely a combination of aircraft and cabin issues that must be resolved. The key metric is time – the more days, the more issues—the fewer days, the better for all, and it is a sign that quality control is optimized.
