The 2,565-aircraft queue that was 1,177 once the cancellations came off

Light grey supplier planning slide, masthead “Brackwater Aerostructures · Demand Planning” and “Airbus order intake vs deliveries · 2019–2025”, headlined “Airbus sold 2,565 more aircraft than it built in seven years. The queue for our wing panels is still growing.” A standfirst says the orders and deliveries are for every Airbus commercial programme, exactly as announced in the headline of each Airbus year-end release from January 2020 to January 2026, in aircraft units on a linear axis from zero, with every year since 2019 shown and every value printed, and that the figure above each pair is orders minus deliveries, what that year added to the queue. The main panel is a grouped column chart on an axis from 0 to 2,500 with a dark blue “Orders” bar and a pale blue “Deliveries” bar for each year: 2019, 1,131 and 863, +268; 2020, 383 and 566, −183 in red; 2021, 771 and 611, +160; 2022, 1,078 and 661, +417; 2023, 2,319 and 735, +1,584; 2024, 878 and 766, +112; 2025, 1,000 and 793, +207. Cards on the right: “The headline number”, +2,565 aircraft added to the queue since 2019, 7,560 orders against 4,995 deliveries, orders beating deliveries in six of seven years with 2020 the only shortfall; “Read-out for the planning board”, a book-to-bill of 1.51 and an average of 366 aircraft a year joining the queue, recommending a third panel-assembly jig for the 2027 rate step and a second shift at Bay 4; “Watch item”, intake softening outside the 2023 spike, with 2025’s 1,000 orders 11.6% below 2019’s 1,131 and 7.2% below 2022’s 1,078; and “Basis of measurement”, naming the Airbus releases and saying orders are the figure each release leads with. Ticks along the foot read “Airbus’s own figures”, “Zero-based linear axis”, “Every year since 2019”, “Every value printed” and “One manufacturer, one unit”, and the footnote says the slide is a demonstration drawn by Misleading Charts, that the supplier, board, jig and recommendation are invented, and that every figure is Airbus’s. — Showing the misleading chart

Cream page headlined “Take the cancellations off and the queue grew by 1,177 aircraft, not 2,565 — and it shrank in three of the seven years, not just 2020.” A standfirst says every Airbus year-end release prints two order figures, gross and net, that the slide drew the gross one, that aircraft leave the order book either as deliveries or as cancellations and only the net figure subtracts both, and that net orders minus deliveries is exactly how much the reported backlog moved, from 7,577 aircraft at the end of 2018 to 8,754 at the end of 2025. The main panel draws each year as a dark green net-orders bar with a hatched amber cap for that year’s cancellations reaching up to the gross figure, beside a grey deliveries bar, on a zero-based axis to 2,500: 2019, net 768 under gross 1,131, deliveries 863; 2020, 268 under 383, 566; 2021, 507 under 771, 611; 2022, 820 under 1,078, 661; 2023, 2,094 under 2,319, 735; 2024, 826 under 878, 766; 2025, 889 under 1,000, 793. Beneath each year is the change in reported backlog: −95, −298, −102 in red, then +157, +1,359, +60 and +96 in green. A strip headed “Seven years added up” draws three bars: gross orders minus deliveries, the slide’s figure, +2,565 (7,560 − 4,995), drawn as an empty outline; net orders minus deliveries, +1,177 (6,172 − 4,995), noted as 2.2 times smaller than the slide’s; and reported backlog from end-2018 to end-2025, +1,177 (7,577 → 8,754). Cards on the right: “The tell was in every headline”, quoting the 2019 release’s “1,131 new aircraft orders, 768 net orders” and noting that cancellations over the period came to 1,388 aircraft, equal to 18.4% of gross orders; “The two years the slide drew backwards”, 2019 at +268 on the slide while the backlog fell 95, and 2021 at +160 while it fell 102; “The ranking turns over”, gross ranking 2019 over 2022 over 2025 and net reversing it to 889, 820, 768, with book-to-bill dropping from 1.51 to 1.24; “Net is a flow, not a survival rate”, explaining that a year’s cancellations mostly hit earlier orders, and that Airbus put 2019’s partly down to ending A380 production; and “What a panel line plans on”, noting 8,754 aircraft is 11 years of work at 2025’s 793 deliveries a year. The footnote lists the seven releases and the 2018 results table, says cancellations are gross minus net and that the 2019 and 2020 releases give them directly as 363 and 115, marks 2021 and 2022 with a dagger and explains that they reconcile to within two aircraft, consistent with two Aeroflot A350-900s whose transfer sanctions blocked, and says both drawings are ours with every input figure Airbus’s. — Showing the misleading chart

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A supplier’s planning slide we drew from Airbus’s year-end releases: orders beat deliveries in six of seven years and added 2,565 aircraft to the queue since 2019. It used the gross order figure from each headline. Take off the 1,388 orders the net figures remove, the cancellations, and the queue grew by 1,177, which is exactly what Airbus’s reported backlog did, and it shrank in 2019 and 2021 as well as 2020.

Airbus, year-end commercial aircraft orders and deliveries releases for 2019–2025 (10 January 2020 to 12 January 2026) and the 2018 results table, 2026Added October 28, 2026

01The claim

Airbus’s order queue grew by 2,565 aircraft from 2019 to 2025, so demand for wing panels is outrunning the line. That is the case made by a supplier planning slide of the kind a parts maker might show, which we drew from Airbus’s orders and deliveries for every year from 2019 to 2025, each figure taken from the headline of Airbus’s own year-end release, on a zero-based axis with every value printed and the pandemic year left in. Orders beat deliveries in six of the seven years, by 268 aircraft in 2019, 160 in 2021, 417 in 2022, 1,584 in 2023, 112 in 2024 and 207 in 2025, with 2020 the only shortfall at −183. Over the period Airbus took 7,560 orders and delivered 4,995 aircraft, a book-to-bill of 1.51, so 2,565 aircraft joined the queue, about 366 a year. Read-out for the planning board: demand for wing panels is running ahead of the line, so approve a third panel-assembly jig for the 2027 rate step. Watch item: outside the 2023 spike, intake is softening, with 2025’s 1,000 orders 11.6% below 2019’s 1,131.

02The trick

Every Airbus year-end release prints two order figures, and the slide took the first one. “1,131 new aircraft orders, 768 net orders,” says the 2019 headline; “771 gross commercial orders, 507 net,” says 2021’s. Gross counts every order signed in the year. Net takes off the cancellations booked in the same year. Airbus states them directly as 363 in 2019 and 115 in 2020; reading gross minus net the same way for the other years, they come to 1,388 across the seven, equal to 18.4% of the gross total. That matters because of what the slide does with the number. It subtracts deliveries and calls the result the queue, but aircraft leave Airbus’s order book by two doors, delivered or cancelled, and gross orders minus deliveries only shuts one of them. The slide passes every check it lists along its foot. The one it doesn’t list is the subtraction. The damage falls on the years when cancellations bunched up. In 2019, when Airbus says cancellations reflected airline situations and its decision to end A380 production, the slide shows +268 while the reported backlog fell by 95, from 7,577 to 7,482. In 2021 it shows +160 while the backlog fell by 102, from 7,184 to 7,082. The watch item comes out backwards too: gross ranks 2019 (1,131) above 2022 (1,078) and 2025 (1,000), so intake looks like it is softening, but net orders run the other way, 768, 820 and 889. (Both drawings are ours. The supplier, its board and the jig are invented, and every figure is Airbus’s.)

03The fix

Draw both figures and make net the solid one. The redraw stacks each year’s net orders in full ink with that year’s cancellations as a hatched cap above them, so the gross figure is still there at the top but no longer stands in for the result. Deliveries go beside it, and under each year is the change in Airbus’s reported backlog. Net orders minus deliveries comes to +1,177 over the seven years (6,172 − 4,995), and that is exactly how far the reported backlog moved, from 7,577 at the end of 2018 to 8,754 at the end of 2025. Year by year it matches to the aircraft except in 2021 and 2022, which are each two off in opposite directions; that fits the two Aeroflot A350-900s that Airbus’s 2023 release says were recorded as sold in December 2021 and later taken off its 2022 deliveries when sanctions blocked the transfer. A reconciliation that closes, here to within two aircraft, is good evidence that no flow has been left out of the arithmetic, and the slide’s 2,565 is 2.2 times the movement it was meant to describe. On net figures the backlog shrank in three of the seven years, not one, and book-to-bill, which aerospace normally quotes on net orders anyway, is 1.24, not 1.51. One caution about what net means: a year’s cancellations mostly hit orders signed in earlier years, so 2019’s 768 is not how many of 2019’s orders stuck. It is how much 2019 changed the order book, which is what the slide was asking. And none of this makes the queue small. 8,754 aircraft is 11 years of work at 2025’s 793 deliveries a year. For someone sizing a panel line, Airbus’s delivery rate decides how fast parts are needed; order intake mostly decides how long the queue lasts.