duopoly
With Boeing’s March numbers published, we can now take a look at the ‘official’ numbers for the Duopoly. You can track the model shown here from our front page, at the top right.
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Page 2: Click the + sign under the OEM to see the actual models delivered. The arrival of the MAX complicated matters, and where possible, we have gone back to identify which model is being delivered.
Page 3 summarizes the key metrics over time.
1Q26 Review
The holiday hangover is finally over, and the Duopoly is getting its pace back. Airbus had a slow start to deliveries this year, its slowest since the pandemic.
The bright spot for Airbus is the 18 A220-300s delivered; that’s 20% of what they delivered in 2025. A not bright spot is A320, with that program looking like it is running out of steam. Slower order pace as customers transition to the A321. The A321 program seems to be having trouble keeping up the delivery pace. Deliveries to date are only 14% of last year’s volume. The A330 and A350 also appear to be slow through 1Q26.
Boeing, on the other hand, exploded out of the gate in January and has been delivering MAXs at a blistering pace.
- MAX 8s are already at 22% of 2025 deliveries
- MAX 9s are at 61% of 2025 (thank you, United Airlines)
- 787s not so much
Orders
Page 5 lists the Orders, and we can see that Airbus had a good quarter, with big A321 orders. January was the best month in the quarter for Boeing.
As the year progresses, the production pipeline increasingly depends on this year’s orders as last year’s production is delivered. The most prominent models in production terms are single aisles. Typically, these take ~30 days from first flight to delivery. You can only deliver what you’ve produced, so bottlenecks in the production process quickly impact the entire system.
Boeing’s limits are currently FAA-driven, and the OEM is bumping up against that limit. Airbus does not have these limits and should be inching toward 75/month, and it is getting closer, as you can see on Page 4.
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