At ch-aviation we are tracking new aircraft deliveries of the largest aircraft manufacturers: Airbus, Boeing, Bombardier, COMAC, De Havilland, Embraer and Irkut.

An analysis of deliveries for the first four months of 2020 shows a significant impact of the Coronavirus/COVID-19 pandemic for new aircraft deliveries from manufacturers to airlines. In April, we saw just 15 aircraft delivered by all manufacturers while the average monthly delivery rate in 2019 was more than eight times higher.

We saw the first signs of aircraft deliveries being hit in February, but it was just the beginning, and now we see new deliveries have almost dried up.

December is the busiest month for manufacturers as they try to deliver as many aircraft as possible in the calendar year. The first two months are usually slower than year-end, but March to June usually is a very busy stretch both for manufacturers and airlines. With the COVID-19 pandemic we see a completely different trend this year – aircraft deliveries have being going down since February.

Boeing deliveries last spring were hit by the grounding of Boeing 737MAX aircraft, the most popular type in Boeing’s portfolio. Still, we can see this year is even worse.

Airbus in February still had a quite positive month with more deliveries than the year before (mainly due to more Airbus A220 deliveries). But when the global pandemic spread, new aircraft deliveries by the European manufacturer went downhill.

When we analysed new aircraft deliveries back in February, we saw new deliveries stop in China, Hong Kong and Macao. Now, our capacity analysis and aircraft grounded analysis shows some signs of recovery in these markets, but aircraft deliveries see no optimism yet.

The number of new deliveries in China, Hong Kong and Macao stopped when the region entered COVID-19. There were no new aircraft deliveries to airlines in China, Hong Kong and Macao in February, whereas 20 new aircraft were delivered on average per month in the same month in 2019. There was one delivery in March and two in April, but this is far from being a sign of recovery in aircraft deliveries. In March, we saw one Airbus A320NEO delivered to “Spring Airlines” and in April the new deliveries were locally manufactured Comac ARJ21 for “Chengdu Airlines” and another Airbus A320NEO for “Loong Air”.

Our hypothesis back in March was right – based on what we saw in China/Hong Kong/Macao, aircraft deliveries slowed down worldwide. Based on the grounded aircraft and capacity data in Asia, we should expect first to see aircraft deliveries being resumed in this part of the world and other continents should follow the path of the recovery.

We used ch-aviation fleets advanced for this analysis.

Follow our blog and our LinkedIn page for the latest data extracts on #chaviationcovid19updates.