Stories

China's carmakers went from also-rans to the world's biggest exporters in half a decade, and the reflex is to assume aircraft are next. Three honest questions: is it inevitable, when would it happen, and which Western counter-moves actually work.

When heads of state land in Washington, Paris, or Beijing, a multi-billion-dollar aircraft order often follows within hours. This is aviation diplomacy — and separating genuine commercial commitment from diplomatic theatre requires three specific discounts.

India's third-round airport privatisation bundles profitable and unprofitable airports together and caps how many any single operator can win — a direct response to one group sweeping all six airports in 2019. Whether that design holds is the real question.

A decade of airline IPOs — IndiGo still up 80%+, Frontier still listed, LATAM relisted July 2024, Spirit finally gone. What the 2021 cluster showed, what separates winners from casualties, and the three questions any carrier must answer before filing.

Airbus delivered 136 aircraft in December 2025 — second-highest on record — and 19 in January 2026. Five years of data show a production system that breathes in an annual rhythm, and why the 2026 push to 870 makes January an even sharper cliff.

easyJet is 84% covered for H1; American and United are at zero. Delta owns a refinery. Every hedge expires — and the expiry cliffs in H2 2026 are the story the filings quietly tell. A carrier-by-carrier map from primary filings.

SAF costs around four times more than conventional Jet-A. The EU mandates 2% blending now and 70% by 2050. At 2024 prices and a 4× premium, the arithmetic hits airlines running 3–8% net margins in a way the mandate timetables do not acknowledge.

As of May 2026, the combined Airbus and Boeing order book stood at roughly 16,000 unfilled aircraft — more than a decade of production at current rates. What a queue this long actually does to commercial aviation.