Overview
According to the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), large civil aircraft are aircraft with a maximum certificated takeoff weight of more than 12,500 pounds. Civil aviation is categorized into two major groups representing all non-military aviation, both private and commercial. These categories are:
- Scheduled air transport, including all passenger and cargo flights operating on regularly scheduled routes; and
- General aviation (GA), including all other civil flights, private or commercial.
Large civil aircraft are predominantly used in scheduled air transport. Most countries collaborate to establish common standards and recommended practices for civil aviation through participation in the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), a specialized agency of the United Nations.
The large civil aircraft sector includes a range of goods and services that support the manufacturing and sustainment of an aircraft: from small parts and sub-assemblies to final assembly of aircraft and maintenance, repair, and overhaul (MRO) services. The large civil aircraft supply chain includes aerostructures, aircraft engines, landing gear, and navigation equipment and avionics.
Market Outlook
Demand for air travel has grown in 2023 and 2024 and is projected to increase in 2025. With greater demand for air travel, airlines continue to upgrade their fleets and purchase new aircraft. Airlines want to satisfy this increasing consumer demand while incurring fewer operating costs, encouraging aircraft manufacturers to provide better planes in less time. Meanwhile, global air cargo demand is projected to increase as e-commerce grows. Generally, companies throughout the aerospace supply chain intend to increase their production or delivery of services to ensure the industry can meet these increasing demands in air travel and air cargo.
Across the large civil aircraft industry, U.S. companies are fortifying their supply chains, developing their workforces, and improving their deliveries of aircraft and aircraft parts and services. Nevertheless, several supply chain and workforce challenges persist, preventing aerospace manufacturers from achieving on-time deliveries. Shortages in critical minerals and metals can slow manufacturing of aerospace parts. Aerospace supply chains remain vulnerable to geopolitical events, natural disaster, and rising fuel costs. Manufacturers at times struggle to find and retain sufficient talent, which can result in labor shortages. Strikes at some aerospace manufacturing plants in the United States have also set back production. If aerospace companies can minimize the impact of these challenges and expand output in 2025 and beyond, then the market will be well positioned to grow alongside air travel demand.
For additional analysis, many large civil aircraft manufacturers and industry organizations produce their own market outlooks. See below for links:
The Boeing Company
Boeing is the primary manufacturer of large civil aircraft in the United States. Boeing Commercial Airplanes offers a range of aircraft, currently including the Next-Generation 737, 737 MAX, 747-8, 767, 777, 777X, 787, freighters, and some business jets. Based on aircraft orders since 2020, Boeing’s most popular aircraft have been the 737 MAX, 787, and 777. As of January 2025, Boeing is working on certifying the 777X, 737 MAX 7, and 737 MAX 10 aircraft models. The certification process for these models has been delayed due to increased regulatory scrutiny and other factors.
According to Boeing’s 2024 Commercial Market Outlook, the company plans to deliver over 43,000 aircraft between 2024 and 2043. To achieve this, Boeing will depend on its more than 20,000 suppliers and partners worldwide. For example. Boeing’s suppliers for the 787 program include several domestic suppliers, as well as manufacturers from the United Kingdom, Italy, Japan, Korea, Australia, and Sweden. Boeing has taken steps to restructure its supply chains to promote safety and efficiency in manufacturing. In July 2024, Boeing reached an agreement to acquire Spirit AeroSystems, the Kansas-based manufacturer of some fuselage and flight deck sections for several Boeing aircraft models.
Other large civil aircraft manufacturers and suppliers include Airbus, Embraer (Brazil), Comac (China), Lockheed Martin, Textron Aviation, Gulfstream, Northrop Grumman, Beechcraft, and Cessna. In most markets, Boeing competes primarily with Airbus for airline procurements.
Wide-Body vs. Narrow-Body
The large civil aircraft market has increasingly favored smaller aircraft models. Airlines have been shifting toward single-aisle, twin-engine aircraft for long-range flights and away from double-aisle, four-engine, jumbo jets based on a growing preference for smaller planes that burn less fuel. There are very few air routes that have sufficient demand to support the use of extra-large aircraft. As a result, wide-body aircraft, such as Boeing’s 747 and Airbus’s A380, have been phased out of production entirely. Boeing ended production of the 747 in 2022, and Airbus ended production of the A380 in 2021.
Aircraft Engines
The aircraft engine market will largely track the large civil aircraft market. The backlog in aircraft deliveries is a critical factor preventing the further growth of the aircraft engine market. As the aviation industry grows, it will spur new demand for more powerful, fuel efficient aircraft engines Aerospace customers are increasingly seeking low maintenance innovative engine designs that are fuel-efficient, cost-effective, and lightweight.
Some of the most promising technologies include electric- and hydrogen-powered aircraft. Hydrogen has some notable advantages over electric-power in aviation, most notably its power-to-weight ratio, making it viable for commercial operations at a much larger scale and in a shorter time frame. Regional, short-haul, and medium-haul flights are ideal candidates for hydrogen-powered aircraft, but long-haul flights would need significant and costly aircraft redesigns, as fuel tanks would necessitate longer fuselages. Electric-powered engines have had notable development success in recent years but still must overcome challenges caused by the size and weight of the batteries needed to power them.
Composites
To reduce aircraft weight and increase fuel efficiency, aircraft manufacturers have increasingly replaced metal with composites, which are especially appealing due to their high strength, low weight and durability. Composite materials have been called “the shape of aerospace’s future.” Large civil aircraft utilize advanced composites in everything from the engines to the airframe, at times approaching more than half of the aircraft’s structure. Composites not only make the airframe stronger, but the reduction in weight enables it to carry more passengers, burn less fuel, fly farther, or combinations of the three. While initially more expensive to produce than traditional metallic parts, composite components can save aircraft operators money on future maintenance costs since the material does not rust or corrode.
Trade Events
We support U.S. exporters at a number of key aerospace events in this sector providing on-site counseling and matchmaking programs. A list of our featured events can be found here.
Policy Points
Technology Innovation
Innovation in the U.S. air traffic system will include the careful integration of new aerospace technologies into the air system as well as manufacturing processes. Those technologies will likely include artificial intelligence into avionics and air traffic control.
Aviation Safety
Safety and certification are key considerations in the large civil aircraft market and often depend on international partnerships between aviation regulators and Bilateral Aviation Safety Agreements (BASA). Please visit the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) website for a full list of the FAA’s international agreements.
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) work together to establish international aircraft certification standards and have had a long-standing aviation safety agreement. The agreement requires that the FAA and EASA develop and adopt procedures for regulatory cooperation and promote mutual rulemaking to maintain and further improve the harmonization of their rules. According to the FAA, “Typically, the FAA and EASA do not completely duplicate each other’s certification of aircraft products, instead each entity performs a ‘validation’ of certification activities.” The agreement strives to give both the FAA and EASA the opportunity to have even greater reliance on the regulatory capabilities and the technical competencies of one another’s aircraft certification systems. Nonetheless, key differences remain. For large civil aircraft, there are numerous airworthiness certification differences between the FAA and EASA. The EASA website has a list of specifications where compliance with FAA standards would not be sufficient to comply with EASA requirements. These lists are intended for EASA validations of FAA products.
Bolstering Air Travel Demand
Supporting growth in civil aviation, loosening of market regulations has long been a key driver of air passenger travel. These changes facilitate market entry, increase competition, and encourage innovation. Such efforts include removing constraints on route entry, pricing, service capacity, and airline cooperative arrangements. These developments have decreased prices for consumers, increased their choices, and diversified routes by creating market friendly conditions for new airlines and business models, such as low-cost carriers, that would not have flourished otherwise.
Fuel-Efficiency
Standards and fuel prices will drive demand for new, more fuel-efficient aircraft in the medium to long term. The aviation industry has already made commitments to contain rising emissions in the short- and medium-term and decrease emissions in the long term, notably in a 2020 pledge by several aircraft manufacturers and carriers to reach net-zero emissions by 2050. Increased demand for efficiency has spurred innovation in new aviation technologies and alternative fuel. For example, hydrogen- and electric-powered aircraft engines are some of the most promising technologies for environmentally friendly aviation. Hydrogen has massive potential in aviation, but significant research and development, investments, and accompanying regulation are needed to make it successful. Electric aircraft, on the other hand, are already seeing regulatory success.
Tariffs & Regulations
Tariffs on large civil aircraft were eliminated in 1980 with the World Trade Organization’s (WTO) Agreement on Trade in Civil Aircraft. This agreement requires signatories to eliminate tariffs on all civil aircraft, engines, flight simulators, and related parts and components, and provide these benefits on a nondiscriminatory basis to other signatories. A list of signatories to the agreement can be found on the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative website.
As a result of disputes over alleged illegal subsidies over the past 16 years and recent World Trade Organization (WTO) arbitration awards, the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) in March 2020 placed a 15 percent tariff on aircraft imported from the European Union (up from a 10 percent tariff placed in October 2019), along with tariffs on a wide variety of non-aerospace related goods. These tariffs are part of an open Section 301 Investigation on large civil aircraft subsidies in the European Union. Documents related to this investigation are located on the USTR website.
For a full list of current U.S. tariff rates, the U.S. International Trade Commission (USITC) publishes and maintains the U.S. Harmonized Tariff Schedule (HTS) and provides technical information on its structure and modification.
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is the U.S. governing body regulating all aspects of civil aviation. The FAA covers large civil aircraft regulations regarding registration, air worthiness certification, design approvals, flights standards, safety advisories and guidance, and a variety of technical data. For further information or to access FAA forms, please visit the FAA’s website [link: https://www.faa.gov/aircraft/].
Standards
The International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) is the U.N. body that establishes the international Standards and Recommended Practices (SARPs) for global aviation. The 191 ICAO member states (listed here) and several global aviation organizations coordinate to develop the non-binding SARPs as a reference for national civil aviation regulators. These national and regional agencies – such as the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) in the United States and the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) in the European Union – use the SARPs to establish aviation safety regulations, airworthiness and type certification, and technical advice which are legally enforceable in their respective domains. This has created a system where civil aviation regulations are harmonized across the globe, with only small differences based on the implementation of individual states.
Please see below for links to ICAO’s SARPs specific to aircraft as well as general safety and navigation guidelines that affect the aviation industry as a whole.
The National Aerospace Standards (NAS) are voluntary standards developed by the aerospace industry. Subject matter experts from Aerospace Industries Association (AIA) member companies participate in committees and working groups to develop and maintain the NAS library, which currently contains over 1400 active standards. These standards cover a wide variety of subject areas including:
- NAS parts (bolts, rivets, washers, screws, nut plates, pins, knobs, etc.)
- Safety Management Systems (NAS9927)
- Nondestructive Test Personnel certification (NAS410)
- Hazardous materials management (NAS411)
- Foreign Object Debris (FOD) prevention (NAS412)
- Cutting tools (drills, reamers, end mills)
- Airport Operations (NAS3306)
- Trade Compliance Standards (TCS)
For more information, please visit the AIA webpage [link: https://www.aia-aerospace.org/standards/]
