Coronavirus Has Popped the Boeing and Airbus Bubble
Years of impressive demand forecasts bred hubris. That’s been exploded as Covid-19 hollows out the aviation industry.
This wasn’t in the forecasts.
Photographer: JUNG YEON-JE/AFP/Getty Images
It’s not just air tickets that are being canceled as the coronavirus causes global travel to seize up. Purchases of aircraft are also being pulled.
Aircraft lessors Avolon Holdings Ltd., China Development Bank Financial Leasing Co., and General Electric Co.’s GECAS have rescinded orders for 173 Boeing Co. 737 MAX aircraft over the past month, worth $17.8 billion at list prices. Airbus is cutting output of planes by a third, while Boeing will reduce production of 787 Dreamliners by half, people familiar with the plans told Julie Johnsson and Siddharth Philip of Bloomberg News.