An aerospace manufacturer is a company or individual involved in the various aspects of designing, building, testing, selling, and maintaining aircraft, aircraft parts, missiles, rockets, or spacecraft. Aerospace is a high technology industry.
The aircraft industry is the industry supporting aviation by building aircraft and manufacturing aircraft parts for their maintenance. This includes aircraft and parts used for civil aviation and military aviation. Most production is done pursuant to type certificates and Defense Standards issued by a government body. This term has been largely subsumed by the more encompassing term: "aerospace industry".
Market
In 2015 the aircraft production was worth US$180.3 Billion: 61% airliners, 14% business and general aviation, 12% military aircraft, 10% military rotary wing and 3% civil rotary wing; while their MRO was worth $135.1 Bn or $ Bn combined.
The global aerospace industry was worth $838 billion in 2017: aircraft & engine OEMs represented 28% ($ Bn), civil & military MRO & upgrades 27% ($ Bn), aircraft systems & component manufacturing 26% ($ Bn), satellites & space 7% ($ Bn), missiles & UAVs 5% ($ Bn) and other activity, including flight simulators, defense electronics, public research accounted for 7% ($ Bn). The countries with the largest industry were led by the United States with $408.4 Bn (%), followed by France with $69 Bn (%), then China with $61.2 Bn (%), the United Kingdom with $48.8 Bn (%), Germany with $46.2 Bn (%), Russia with $27.1 Bn (%), Canada with $24 Bn (%), Japan with $21 Bn (%), Spain with $14 Bn (%) and India with $11Bn (%). The top 10 countries represent $731 Bn or % of the whole industry.
In 2018, the new commercial aircraft value is projected for $270.4 billion while business aircraft will amount for $18 billion and civil helicopters for $4 billion.
Largest aerospace companies
Geography
In September 2018, PwC ranked aerospace manufacturing attractiveness: the most attractive country was the United States, with $240 billion in sales in 2017, due to the sheer size of the industry (#1) and educated workforce (#1), low geopolitical risk (#4, #1 is Japan), strong transportation infrastructure (#5, #1 is Hong Kong), a healthy economy (#10, #1 is China), but high costs (#7, #1 is Denmark) and average tax policy (#36, #1 is Qatar). Following were Canada, Singapore, Switzerland and United Kingdom.
Within the US, the most attractive was Washington state, due to the best Industry (#1), leading Infrastructure (#4, New Jersey is #1) and Economy (#4, Texas is #1), good labor (#9, Massachusetts is #1), average tax policy (#17, Alaska is #1) but is costly (#33, Montana is #1). Washington is tied to Boeing Commercial Airplanes, earning $10.3 billion, is home to 1,400 aerospace-related businesses, and has the highest aerospace jobs concentration. Following are Texas, Georgia, Arizona and Colorado.
In the US, the Department of Defense and NASA are the two biggest consumers of aerospace technology and products. The Bureau of Labor Statistics of the United States reported that the aerospace industry employed 444,000 wage and salary jobs in 2004, many of which were in Washington and California, this marked a steep decline from the peak years during the Reagan Administration when total employment exceeded 1,000,000 aerospace industry workers.
During that period of recovery a special program to restore U.S. competitiveness across all U.S. industries, Project Socrates, contributed to employment growth as the U.S. aerospace industry captured 72 percent of world aerospace market. By 1999 U.S. share of the world market fell to 52 percent.
In the European Union, aerospace companies such as Airbus, Safran, BAE Systems, Thales, Dassault, Saab AB, Terma A/S, Patria Plc and Leonardo are participants in the global aerospace industry and research effort.
In Russia, large aerospace companies like Oboronprom and the United Aircraft Corporation (encompassing Mikoyan, Sukhoi, Ilyushin, Tupolev, Yakovlev, and Irkut, which includes Beriev) are among the major global players in this industry.