Source page: McKinsey & Company
Commentary
Plane planning
Aerospace | Manufacturing
March 10, 2023 – Demand is soaring in the commercial aviation industry, as passenger air travel rebounds from pandemic lows. More travel combined with aging planes has the industry strategizing future fleet needs, explain partners Frank Coleman and Vik Krishnan and coauthors. Depending on economic performance in the sector, aircraft demand could range from about 5,000 to more than 11,000 in the next few years.
To read the article, see “Planning for uncertainty in commercial aerospace,” February 15, 2023.
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Visual form
Scenario stacked bar chart with aircraft illustrations.
Layout / body structure
The visual places aircraft silhouettes across the top to show narrow-body, wide-body, and regional categories, then uses four stacked bars beneath them to compare demand scenarios. Reader moves left to right through the scenarios while using the airplane drawings as a category key.
What is being compared
It compares global commercial passenger aircraft demand under four scenarios: the existing orderbook, continued resilience, recession-driven slowdown, and resurgent growth, with each scenario split into narrow-body, wide-body, and regional aircraft.
Measurement system
The measure is thousands of aircraft, with total demand shown at the top of each bar and segment labels indicating the contribution of each aircraft type within the stack.
Visible structure inside the graphic
Each scenario uses a dark base for narrow-body demand, a lighter mid-band for wide-body demand, and a thin top band for regional aircraft. The heights and labels make clear that narrow-body planes dominate every scenario and that the stacks get tallest in the resurgent-growth case.
Main takeaway from the visual
Demand remains centered on narrow-body aircraft in every case, and only the resurgent-growth scenario visibly rises above the orderbook baseline, which means the most optimistic scenario is the only one that clearly outstrips the existing backlog.
Key standout values or extremes
The current orderbook totals 9,402 aircraft, continued resilience sits near 7,100, recession-driven slowdown near 5,200, and resurgent growth near 11,600. In the orderbook, narrow-body demand is 7,781, wide-body 1,095, and regional 526, and the resurgent-growth case keeps that same heavy narrow-body skew at roughly 10,200 narrow-body, 1,200 wide-body, and 200 regional aircraft.
Controls / sequence, when applicable
This is a static chart image with no in-chart controls to operate.
Companion media, when applicable
There is no separate companion audio or video; the chart image is the full visual on this page.