Airbus, Boeing and Gulfstream--Year-End 2024 Delivery Adjustments

With nine months of deliveries on the books, Airbus’s 2024 delivery target of 770 is looking a little shaky. In the first nine months of 2023, Airbus delivered 488 aircraft, and their total-year deliveries were 735. So far in 2024, Airbus has delivered 497 aircraft, nine more than last year’s nine-month total. Assuming the same torrid delivery pace in the final quarter of 2024 as was experienced in 2023, that suggests that Airbus is actually on track to deliver just 747 aircraft this year. We’re giving Airbus some benefit of the doubt by forecasting a 754-unit total for 2024. They claim they’ll reach 770 – we’ll just have to wait and see.

Boeing, amid an ongoing strike of 33,000 machinists, made some announcements prior to its third quarter 2024 earnings release. In addition to the announcement of 17,000 layoffs, Boeing confirmed what everyone already assumed - that deliveries of the 777X would commence in 2026 not 2025. We had adjusted our short term 777X forecast last month to reflect that reality, so, no change there for the time being (although additional delays can’t be ruled out).

Additionally, the company announced that it would stop producing the 767-300F after 2026. After delivering eight 767-300Fs this year, the backlog stands at just 29 aircraft. This reverses an earlier revision we made to the 767-300F, extending production out to 2033 based on an extension granted by the U.S. congress back in July. As a result, our 10-year 767-300F figure has been slashed from over 100 or just 37 aircraft (including the 2024 aircraft delivered so far). There is nothing new-build that can replace that product so it just becomes a dead loss to our 10-year figure. Perhaps this will drive a few more A330 or 777 freighter reconfigurations.

And General Dynamics, in its third quarter earnings call guided that Gulfstream would deliver only 42 G700s this year against an expectation of 50 earlier, and that total deliveries would be in the 150 range, from the earlier guidance of 160. We previously had reduced our Gulfstream deliveries to around 150 units but left the G700 at 50. With the new guidance we’ve adjusted G700 to the GD guidance, while adjusting other models up slightly. As usual, though, there hasn’t been a change in the 10-year numbers.