Airbus A320 Finally Soars Past Boeing 737 As The Most Popular Plane Of All Time
It’s been a long time in coming, but it’s finally happened: on October 7, the Airbus A320 family of airliners overtook the reigning Boeing 737 as the best-selling jet of all time, a landmark moment in commercial aviation history. This comes on the heels of a dreadful couple of years for Boeing, including a number of major issues with the 737 itself. The plane suffered a pair of fatal crashes in 2018 and 2019, and a door panel blew out of one in 2024.
It seems like the airlines of the world took notice: 737 sales have been appreciably lower in the last few years. Part of that has to do with mandatory production caps on the plane imposed by the FAA after the crashes. The aviation agency determined that Boeing was playing fast and loose with safety to build 737s faster, so the caps are meant to force the company to slow down and ensure it builds aircraft that stay in the sky. Airbus, which has no such caps, has been free to make the A320 and its variants as fast as it can produce them. Now, with the delivery of the 12,260th A320 (specifically, an A320neo to Flynas of Saudi Arabia), the 737 has lost its dominant position in the industry. It’s not likely to recover it anytime soon.
Read more: Airbus A350 Vs. Boeing 787: The Main Differences And How To Tell Them Apart
The importance of the narrow-body twinjet
A Boeing 737 MAX 8 on the ground – Wenjie Zheng/Getty Images
Boeing first flew the 737 to customers in 1967, and it’s hard to overstate just what an impact it had. A smaller, more fuel-efficient jet than other models of the era, the 737 was intended for shorter flights with fewer passengers. That opened up affordable air travel to airports outside of the major hubs, which drew in a flood of new ticket sales. As 737s received upgrades and started flying longer routes, this form factor simply took over the whole industry.
At its peak, the 737 accounted for nearly a third of all flights on the whole globe. Today, narrow-body twinjets make up 66% of all airliners, and Boeing predicts that number will grow to 72% by 2044. The problem for Boeing is that, in 1988, Airbus delivered the first 737 competitor, the A320. The A320 family (which includes the A318, A319, and A321) has been outpacing the 737 for a while, and now, it’s seized that all-time crown for itself. So, a lot of that future growth will go to Airbus rather than the company that invented the narrow-body.
Can Boeing regain control of its trajectory? Maybe, since the FAA is starting to loosen its grip on the company again. Even so, the 737, even in its latest MAX generation, is a bit of a dinosaur at this point. It’s the only modern commercial plane that doesn’t feature fly-by-wire controls (in which a computer interprets the pilot’s inputs and figures out which parts of the plane to adjust). In fact, guess which airliner was the first to introduce that tech? The Airbus A320, way back in 1988. Airbus took a bet on the future; Boeing is still living in the past. The future has arrived.
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