Essentially their competitive advantage is having access to these companies. You can't just show up at Airbus and propose to build them a system for their data flows. Palantir does that and charges multiples of the market rate.
If you want to pick winners, look for companies that hire connected companies.
In hindsight, the fact that Palatir went to Airbus meant that the fix was in and it was already decided that Boeing was going down. Or for the less cynical, it was Palantir's magic that made Airbus successful and if Boeing were competent they would have hired Palantir.
