Companies in Toulouse

Airbus is proof that politics can build an airplane: created in 1970 as a consortium of French, German, British, and Spanish aerospace companies, it was a deliberate European counterweight to America's Boeing and McDonnell Douglas. Its first product, the A300 widebody, sold poorly at first — but the gamble eventually worked, and Airbus overtook Boeing as the world's largest commercial aircraft maker by deliveries in 2019. The company's commercial aircraft line is the core: the A320 family (the best-selling airliner family ever, with over 18,000 orders), the A350 (its long-range twin-aisle flagship built largely from carbon-fiber composites), and the A380 double-decker (a bold bet on hub-to-hub travel that never paid off commercially and ended production in 2021). Beyond airliners, Airbus builds military aircraft (the A400M transport, Eurofighter), helicopters (the world's largest rotorcraft maker), and defense & space systems (satellites, missile systems). With about 150,000 employees and annual revenue near €65 billion, Airbus operates final assembly lines in France, Germany, Spain, China, and the US. Its industrial model — giant sections built across Europe and flown to assembly on Beluga transporter aircraft — is unique in aerospace. For airlines, the Airbus-Boeing duopoly means every fleet decision is a choice between the two, and Airbus's A320neo family has been winning the narrowbody war.