The battle between the 737 and A320 began when Airbus made the bold move to challenge Boeing’s single-aisle dominance with the launch of the A320-100, first delivered to Air France in March 1988. Prior, however, the A320 appears before the delivery as Airbus operated several test aircraft. A two-horse race between the 737-300 and A320-200 emerged in the 1990s, and by the early 2000s the latter model became the most widely used by airlines. However, the introduction of the 737-800 saw Boeing claw back significant market share, and by the start of the following decade the two OEMs remained locked in their fierce battle to secure the mantel of supplier of the world’s most popular narrowbody twinjet.

In this visualization our data analysts have exported the in-service figures from point of entry into the market for each variant. The A320 appears before the announcement of Air France taking delivery of the first aircraft, because Airbus operated flight test aircraft prior to the hand-over. Although our analysts chose to start the bar chart race at 1980, the 737-100/200 program had been in production since 1966.