Airbus was initially a consortium of European companies that, individually, had trouble competing with Boeing (and, to a lesser extent, MacDonnell Douglas) outside of their home markets. They followed the lead of the Anglo-French effort to build the Concorde, an engineering triumph that was never really financially viable.

The Airbus A300, the first wide-body twin-engine airliner, got off to a relatively slow start in sales. A major turning point was when Airbus made a sweetheart deal for Eastern Airlines to use a small fleet of A300s on a trial basis. The airline loved the plane, ordered more, and Airbus had a foothold in the crucial US market.

As for Boeing, it began its dominance when the 707 jet airliner beat the similar Douglas DC-8 to market by a few months. They were also more willing to customize the plane for potential customers, and the 707 outsold the DC-8 almost two to one.

The Boeing 727 and 737 were smash hits, and then the 747 revolutionized air travel because of its unprecedented capacity. What was now McDonnell Douglas countered with the three-engined DC-10, but it suffered from some early accidents (and was even grounded for some time in 1979) and the very similar Lockheed L-1011 TriStar split the market. The DC-10 and its successor MD-11 eventually developed into a reliable plane, and the smaller DC-9/MD-80 series was a huge hit, but Boeing was just too far ahead and eventually absorbed McDonnell Douglas through a merger in 1997.