Book-to-bill fall is no cause for alarm

摘要

Airbus and Boeing saw dramatic declines in their book-to-bill ratios last year as their combined result fell below the industry's long-term average. Analysts expect this trend to continue in the near term but do not see it as an indicator that demand for new aircraft is softening. Between them, Airbus and Boeing boosted output in 2015 by 3% to almost 1,400 aircraft. But their order intake declined more than a third from the all-time commercial jet record of 2,888 net orders in 2014, to 1,804 last year. While this is still a respectable tally, it is the first time that combined net orders has dropped below the 2,000-mark since 2010. The consequence of the rising production and declining sales is a combined book-to-bill ratio of 1.3, below the long-term average of 1.6.