This decade the aircraft industry discovered metal fatigue. The British Comet 1 started to fall out of the sky without any known cause. After hard work at Farnborough, the weakness was found to be cracks developing around the squared windows. This lead to all pressurized
aircraft after this only have windows with rounded edges.

But the largest news this decade was the introduction into service of the pure jet aircraft.
 

This decade marks the end of narrow-bodied four engined jets for passenger flights. Much of these DC-8s and 707s were converted to freighters, since the demand of these was rising. At the end of this decade, marked the start of the tri-jet conversion to freighters.

Boeing by the beginning of this decade brought out a twin-twin (767) to counter Airbus A300. With the ETOPS regulations appearing, the 767 has become the most pre-dominant aircraft for the transatlantic service.

This decade also marks the beginning of regional jet era. The first to appear is BAe 146. But the turbo-props counter, within one year four different for regional application have their first flight.

For aircraft in the 120 - 180 passenger class it's getting hotter. Boeing brings out the 757, the 737 is upgraded, MDC brings out the upgraded DC-9 (MD-80), and Airbus starts to deliver a totally new aircraft - the A320. The A320 is the first commercial passenger aircraft which uses the fly-by-wire technology.
 

The second aircraft news of the 1990s is the growth of Airbus, which in this decade brings out A319s, A321s, A330s and A340s. Boeing I believe did not recognize Airbus as a serious competitor until it was to late. All Airbus aircraft after the A320 have a common flight deck. Boeing is trying to counter this with bringing out the 777, accusing Airbus for getting government subsidies, and even revamping the 737 for third time. Will this be good enough Boeing?

Not to be forgotten is the fight in the regional business. Embraer from Brazil brings out the ERJ 145/135, Canadair (now Bombardier Aerospace) brings out their CRJs, Dornier tries with a turbo-prop 328 - it's later converted to pure jet as the 328JET after they have merged with Fairchild. Even Avro try to revamp the 146 to RJ 70/RJ85/RJ100 to some luck. Saab with the 2000 and BAe with the Jetstream 41 also try to penetrate the market. What the result is we can see today, only two survived as manufacturers - Embraer and Bombardier.

The year before Boeing swallowed MDC, Fokker went into bankruptcy. 86 years in business was ended, and fine aircraft like the F.50, F.70 and F.100 weren't made any more.