Last week, both Airbus and Boeing have released the figures of aircraft deliveries for the complete 2018: 800 and 806 airplanes, respectively, in what is a new industry record. In a previous post I showed the evolution commercial wide-body airplanes’ deliveries per year since 1969 (year of the introduction of the 747) till 2018. In this article, I wanted to show this other graphic with the evolution of the cumulative wide-body airplanes’ deliveries per model since 1969 until 2018.
For the first time since 1969, the Boeing 747 is not the most built wide-body airplane in history, as in 2018 it was surpassed by the Boeing 777. At the end of the year cumulative deliveries stood at 1,548 and 1,582, respectively.
Diving into Boeing Commercial Airplanes site, we can see when that happened:
- On March 20th, with the delivery of a 777-300ER (MSN 64989; LN 1548) to United Airlines (registration N2645U), the 777 programme matched the 1,543 cumulative deliveries that the 747 had achieved until then.
- On March 22nd, with the delivery of another 777-300ER (MSN 64085; LN 1538) this time to Qatar Airways (registration A7-BEQ), the 777 programme surpassed the 747 programme deliveries, and established a new record with 1,544 cumulative deliveries. Since then, it has taken the lead until year end (1,582) and for the foreseeable near future.
The Blog by Javier 