ABSTRACT
In everyday usage the aircraft industry is generally lumped with the 'aerospace' sector. A loose coinage, aerospace embraces aeroengines, avionics (aviation electronics), missiles, and space vehicles in addition to the manufacture of aircraft. Indeed, the aircraft industry in its present form is really focused on the airframe producers, that is to say, the manufacturers of aircraft fuselages and wings who also undertake the installation of power plants and all the other components and systems, manufactured elsewhere, but brought to the airframe plant for final assembly. The aircraft industry is in truth a part-fabricator, part-assembly operation which constitutes perhaps the most visible aspect of the much more amorphous aerospace sector.
