I just read about the financial troubles at Airbus, which are caused by both a weak US dollar and by serious delays to its flagship A380 Super Jumbo (Wikipedia).
There’s an interesting quote from an employee at a German plant who says that:
“We used to build 200 planes a year when we were doing great and now we are even making 438 a year and it’s still the end.”
So, the question that popped in my mind is: how many planes are there in the world. According to this special US Census release, it appears that there were 7,900 airliners in 2003.