The commercial aftermarket boom is coming to an end.
New-aircraft deliveries are up, meaning both fleet replacement and growth needs can be satisfied without extending older aircraft and engine service lives. High fuel prices are making more routes unprofitable, which causes airlines—the smart ones, at least—to trim capacity. The resulting drop in key traffic metrics is helping drive the inevitable aircraft replacement cycle.
Nobody will argue it’s not happening. But just how quickly the shift will be felt across the MRO landscape remains to be seen.
Aviation Week’s just-released 2027 Commercial Fleet & MRO Forecast sees new-aircraft deliveries totaling 1,860 in 2027. The figure is relevant because it would top the 1,792 total reached in 2018—the last full year that both Airbus and Boeing were not hamstrung by delivery-suppressing supply-chain or internal quality issues.
As more new aircraft flow into the fleet, older ones will depart—and in large numbers. Southwest Airlines is on track to take delivery of 67 aircraft this year and will retire 60, for instance. Next year’s figures are expected to be larger. United Airlines plans to take more than 100 narrowbodies in 2027 and around 25 widebodies.
Retirements are on the rise, but not dramatically. Aviation Week’s forecast sees about 600 this year and averaging 942 annually through 2035. The forecast’s peak retirement year is now seen as 2031—it has been steadily sliding to the right as more older aircraft have hung onto their spots in global fleets in recent years.
The near-term outlook, driven by what’s already flown and needs service, is strong. Uncertainty surrounding macro factors—notably fuel prices and the demand ramifications of the Middle East turmoil—means the medium-term remains hard to call.
It’s possible the airlines keep flying weaker routes or park some aircraft but stop short of parting them out while they keep their eyes on the horizon. Executives at Safran and GE Aerospace—joint-venture partners in CFM—point to lower-than-expected CFM56 retirements this year as a sign of resilience in the mature fleet.
“At the beginning of the year we said we expected CFM56 retirements to be 2% to 3%,” GE Aerospace CFO Rahul Ghai said on an Oct. 20 earnings call. “Now we are expecting somewhere between 1.5 to 2 points of CFM56 retirements.”
Aviation Week’s figures show 221 CFM56-powered aircraft retirements in 2026 as of Oct. 20. That’s about 1.9% of the total fleet.
The CFM partners aren’t seeing any signs of a sudden jump, either.
“We are looking very carefully at the retirement rate. Once again, the good news is that it’s still going to be low this year,” Safran CEO Olivier Andriès said on an Oct. 23 earnings call. “We forecast that this rate is going to increase smoothly year after year.”
“What makes us confident for 2027 [and] 2028 is that we still believe that airlines are mindful to keep capacity despite this complex environment,” he added. “They want to make sure that they protect their ability to fly and keep capacity, and therefore are reluctant to reduce their capacity.”
The widebody market is showing similar resilience. Ghai called out both shop visit volume and large workscopes on the GE90 and increasingly the GEnx fleets as positive trends.
“Really strong fleet performance. The departures were up strongly as well,” he said of GE’s widebody portfolio. “That is translating to strong shop visit demand.”
And it’s not just engines. RTX’s Collins Aerospace reported a 9% increase in commercial aftermarket sales in the third quarter, led by an 18% jump in its upgrades and modifications work.
Eventually, MRO growth rates will more closely resemble historical, steady-time norms of mid-to high single digits. (Aviation Week’s forecast settled on a compound annual growth rate of 3.6% for the next decade.)
Some on Wall Street are already hedging their bets.
“A replacement cycle is underway,” Melius Research analyst Scott Mikus wrote in a mid-September research note. “That isn’t good for aftermarket companies that derive the majority of their profits from spare parts and maintenance services.”
But the slowdown is hardly sudden—and may be slower than expected.
“MROs appear to be increasingly bullish about the outlook for next year, which runs counter to consensus investor sentiment,” RBC Capital Markets analyst Ken Herbert wrote in early October, leaning into results from his quarterly MRO survey. “Investors appear ready to already discount 2027 across the aftermarket ... However, our survey points to an even stronger outlook despite the increasingly tough environment.”
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