At the end of February there were over 9,000 large commercial jets on firm backlog order. There were also very nearly 16,700 large civil jet engines on firm order. Half of those engines are CFM engines due, largely, to the huge demand for the CFM LEAP powerplant. In terms of both aircraft and engines, these are record numbers. A booming industry? Well, not really. When you go through the figures, just about all of the growth in the last nine months is attributable to demand for single-aisle aircraft with the new CFM and Pratt & Whitney engines. Other aircraft and engine programs have not been quite so fortunate.

Aerospace Market News is an Industry Research Group report for manufacturing companies and aerospace analysts. Every month it has a detailed analysis of industry trends, backed up by the latest production rate and order book figures for large commercial jets, regional aircraft, general aviation, business aircraft and commercial engine programs.

Click on The Industry today to read our view on the current status of the commercial aircraft industry. You can download the cover and contents pages of the most recent issue from the Latest Issue page. On the Next Issue page, you can see some brief details about the content of the April 2012 issue which will be published shortly.