Airbus keeps top spot in coronavirus-blighted jet market

Europe’s Airbus posted stronger-than-expected deliveries of 566 jets in 2020, remaining the world’s largest planemaker as a year of pandemic-induced upheaval for air travel coincided with a grounding crisis at US rival Boeing. Deliveries fell by 34% from a record posted a year earlier, when travel demand was riding high on the increasing mobility of consumers in fast-growing markets across Asia. Now, the aerospace industry is wrestling with the reluctance of most airlines to take delivery of jets as they struggle to save cash, and a drop in air traffic that Airbus says could take until 2023 or 2025 to regain the pre-pandemic levels of 2019. Still, Airbus said it had delivered 566 aircraft in 2020, exceeding estimates earlier in the year when the coronavirus crisis led to a lockdown of major travel markets. “We can be cautiously optimistic for 2021...but challenges and uncertainties remain high,” CE Guillaume Faury told reporters. The announcement confirmed a Reuters report on Tuesday that Airbus had delivered more than 560 jets in 2020.<br/>