Aerospace

Backed by extensive research and data from our software Observatory, Cambashi’s research emphasizes the Areospace industry’s recovery to pre-pandemic levels and strong future growth prospects. 

Cambashi’s e-learning course and Industry Insights include more information about the Aerospace industry, alongside high-level market intelligence from our market-leading datasets. 

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What is the current position of the aerospace industry?

Air travel demand has largely returned to or surpassed pre-pandemic levels in many markets and rising incomes and growing international travel should continue to support demand for commercial aircraft, although supply chain bottlenecks continue to constrain production.  
Geopolitical tension continues to drive sustained increases in defense budgets. This should continue to support demand for military aircraft, missiles, and air defense systems. 
Engine shortages, labor gaps, and supplier constraints remain the primary challenge to commercial output despite recovered demand, keeping backlogs elevated and raising costs for airliners and manufacturers. 

Aerospace Industry Trends and Challenges

Aerospace companies face a number of challenges outside of their businesses over which they have little control. The companies best placed to deal with changing market dynamics study industry trends and try to predict them in advance, whilst those poorly prepared adopt a more reactive response and often find themselves playing catch-up. 

 The top challenges facing aerospace manufacturers in 2026 are: 

  • rising geopolitical tension 
  • skilled worker shortages 
  • supply chain disruptions 
  • trade wars and tariffs 

Despite ongoing headwinds, the industry grew steadily in 2025. Some of the trends that will continue to drive the industry forward in 2026 include: 

  • growth of artificial intelligence 
  • increase in defense spending 
  • increase in global passenger traffic 
  • increase in MRO demand 
  • push towards sustainability 

For more in-depth information about the Aerospace industry, check out our e-learning course and Industry Insights platform.

E-learning course & Insights Platform

E-learning course

  • Self-paced e-learning
  • CPE-approved
  • Designed for customer-facing professionals

Objectives

  • Identify the industry terminology
  • Identify the relationships between typical companies in the industry and understand the structure of a typical business
  • Pick out some of the major issues faced by companies in today’s industry
  • Differentiate between the initiatives they take to respond to business issues

Cambashi Ltd is registered with the National Association of State Boards of Accountancy (NASBA) as a sponsor of continuing professional education on the National Registry of CPE Sponsors. State boards of accountancy have final authority on the acceptance of individual courses for CPE credit. Complaints regarding registered sponsors may be submitted to the National Registry of CPE sponsors through its website: http://www.nasbaregistry.org

Industry Insights Platform

  • Tactical industry intelligence updated in real-time by industry experts.
  • The latest trends & challenges, business drivers, products & services, and technology.
  • Key players and consumer perspective
  • Industry terminology and metrics
  • Deeper knowledge across a variety of industry subjects

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Aerospace Related Professions

The employment data highlights the important geographical difference in the makeup of the workforce. AMER has the most workers followed by EMEA and then APAC. Looking deeper, the typically more developed regions of North America and Western Europe have a significantly higher proportion of workers in higher-skilled roles. Comparatively, the workforce throughout each region in APAC is still dominated by traditionally less-skilled occupations.

The employment view of the industry also points to the relative inefficiency of companies in the APAC region. Central Asia has half as many workers as North America and almost the same as Western Europe, yet the value-added generated by the region is much lower. This is then backed up looking at the spend on software, where Central Asia is significantly smaller. This highlights the efficiency gains that regions with more intensive use of software are able to exploit, allowing them to ‘do more with less’.

Data from the Cambashi Employment Observatory shows that world-wide there are 8x the number of managers and skilled trades people compared with architects, engineers and technicians. This represents a significant opportunity not only for Aerospace software vendors but also for businesses looking for further efficiencies as part of digital transformation.

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Engineering Software Market in the Aerospace Industry

Software plays a major role in the aerospace industry as it is essential to design, simulation, production, supply chain, and maintenance activities. 
The relative sizes of the Computer-Aided Technologies (Mechanical CAD, Mechanical CAE, CAM) and PLM software sectors in the global aerospace market. The total is worth approximately $US2.4 billion annually. Surprisingly, MCAE is bigger than MCAD, showing the importance of engineering analysis and simulation in the aerospace sector. Historically, the MCAD market in aerospace was much larger than MCAE, but the MCAD market is flattening out while MCAE continues to accelerate. 

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