Select Page

Airbus continues with a bullish view of global market demand for air travel and commercial aircraft orders in this impressive report titled “Growing Horizons.”  Compare this highly detailed report with similar reports on Avi8ion’s sites for Boeing, Embraer, Bombardier, COMAC, Mitsubishi and Russia’s UAC.  The Executive Summary of the report provides several key points that will drive demand in the coming decades.  Highlighting the report throughout is continuing strong and resilient passenger traffic growth.  Airbus estimates this growing demand environment will double Revenue Passenger Kilometers (RPKs) every 15 years.  Evolving market and demographic factors, including private consumption drives this growth.

Amid this backdrop, Airbus estimates demand for 34,900 new aircraft by 2036, driven by 34,170 passenger aircraft and 730 freighters.  For passenger aircraft, 40% of this new demand will be needed for replacement and 60% for growth. Further, 71% of airframe demand is driven by single-aisle aircraft while widebodies represent 54% of value demand.

Airbus Regional Outlook

On a regional basis, Airbus estimates that the Asia Pacific region accounts for 41% of future global demand.  The US and Europe together represent 36%.  The more detailed regional outlooks in the report allows readers to quickly glean the most relevant data for their areas of interest. Unsurprisingly, the Asia-Pacific region leads future world traffic by 2036. This represents a threefold increase by the end of the forecast period. With developing economies continuing to thrive, traffic between these emerging countries will grow at 6.2% per annum.  This represents a growing share of air traffic, from 29% of world traffic in 2016 up to 40% by 2036.

On a more regionally-specific basis, Domestic China represents the largest traffic flow before the end of the forecast period. Domestic Chinese traffic will almost quadruple.   Domestic USA increases by 50% from an already high base.  Though more mature markets, the three major flows connecting Western Europe will all develop: Western-Europe – USA, Intra-Western Europe and Western-Europe – Middle East demand will grow 1.8, 1.6 and 2.5 times respectively. Unsurprisingly, amongst the Top 20 traffic flows, 50% will involve Asia-Pacific and 25% will involve the Middle East

On a macroeconomic basis, Airbus discusses further considerations for their outlook. These include GDP growth, passenger demand, cargo demand, crude oil and jet fuel pricing and continuing liberalisation of global commercial air travel. Finally, the report provides a detailed discussion of commercial aircraft retirements, freighter conversions and aircraft retirements.  These discussions provide the basis for many their demand assumptions.

Translate »