The broken and unbalanced single-aisle market duopoly

For some time the single-aisle market has been commoditized. It’s all about the lowest production costs and the fastest deliveries. Airbus and Boeing have managed this process so well, to date, nobody has been able to break the duopoly. The Chinese and Russian aircraft under development don’t look like they could do this either. Airbus and Boeing have created economies of scale that act as a big wall keeping out everyone else. Where a threat appeared, like Bombardier’s C Series, part of the duopoly (Boeing) tried to kill it and the other part of the duopoly, after aggressive pricing against it, finally absorbed it (Airbus).

The duopoly has been effective.  The following chart lists in-service aircraft in the single-aisle (737 and A320 families) fleet by age category.  The data is through September 2020.