Where Aerospace Manufacturers Are Gravitating in 2020

PwC’s Aerospace & Defense practice has issued the seventh edition of its Aerospace Manufacturing Attractiveness Rankings. It does so at “a precarious moment in the industry’s history,” according to the report’s introduction. “By April 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic had plunged commercial aviation into crisis mode, with global revenue passenger kilometers (RPKs) nosediving by 94% compared to the same month a year earlier. International flights ground to a near-complete halt. By June, RPKs were down 87% against the year-ago period. Meanwhile, the International Air Transport Association (IATA) forecasts that 2019 levels will not be restored until 2024.”

Aircraft and their many components are still being manufactured globally, nevertheless, and the 2020 version of the rankings sheds light on where that is likely to remain the case, given the attributes of the locations performing well. PwC explains in the report that the “rankings are based on a weighted score of category and subcategory rankings. Ranking categories include cost, economy, geopolitical risk, infrastructure, labor, industry and tax policy. Geopolitical risk has been excluded from state rankings, as the risk is similar for all the states. The categories comprise several discrete metrics, which are then aggregated and weighted to arrive at the final rankings. While both state and country rankings use comparable metrics, there are slight differences in each measure’s relevance to the ranking and the availability of quantitative information.”

Read full article.