Aviation International News senior correspondent Ian Goold has been involved in aerospace since 1964 and in aviation media for more than 40 years. He enjoyed a 20-year career at Flight International magazine, where he was latterly air-transport editor before turning freelance in 1993. A winner of the European Regions Airline Association Hank McGonagle award for excellence in aerospace journalism and a Royal Aeronautical Society Aerospace Journalist of the Year global&nbsp;award, he has edited or contributed to aerospace and aviation magazines, special publications, and websites in Africa, Asia/Pacific, Europe, the Middle East, and North and South America. Ian entered aerospace as an apprentice at the British Aircraft Corporation at Brooklands (Weybridge), where he worked on production and final assembly lines of the Vickers Super VC10, and BAC One-Eleven , and manufacture of Concorde major sub-assemblies. He subsequently graduated from the BAC Design Training School to work in the airframe structures drawing office (including design of international future projects, such as the Panavia Tornado multi-role combat aircraft) before joining Flight International in 1973. Apart from years of reading aircraft magazines and books, his first direct contact with aviation media had come during the early 1970s when he was involved at Brooklands with the Weybridge Man-powered Aircraft Group, which designed and built the tenth aircraft to fly under purely human power. As an aviation journalist, he has worked at more than&nbsp; 50 of the major biennial&nbsp;global and regional international aerospace industry shows at Le Bourget, Farnborough, Singapore, and Dubai (having missed attending only one "Farnborough" since 1960), plus innumerable NBAA, HAI, (U.S.) AOPA, and EBACE Conventions and ERA Assemblies. His favourite aircraft is the Hawker Hunter, of which – as a schoolboy – he heard hundreds make their first flights from Dunsfold, where also on September 24, 2013, he saw the penultimate landing of the VC10 (happily involving an example of which he had witnessed the maiden takeoff in 1970) a day before the last example made the design's final flight (unless, of course....).

Senior correspondent

Ian Goold

Travel in Asia/Pacific, with its 60-percent share of the global population, remains a primary contributor to world aviation growth, the region's "vast geographical area (including many island nations)" generating strong demand, says Boeing's 2019-38 Commercial Market Outlook (CMO).

 


Subdividing the area into five (China, Northeast Asia, Oceania, South Asia, and Southeast Asia), the manufacturer forecasts that intra-regional aviation will expand to take its share of total air travel from "roughly one quarter" to more than 30 percent, the highest of any world region. "With wide-ranging economic and demographic diversity, each sub-region contributes in varying ways."

 


Over the coming 20 years, Boeing soothsayers see an overall 5.5 percent per year increase in traffic (revenue passenger-miles [RPMs]) in Asia/Pacific, driven by 3.9-percent annual growth in gross domestic product. This expected growth will be accommodated by a larger fleet growing annually by 4.6 percent as carriers take on some 17,390 new machines nominally worth $2.830 billion.

 


The U.S. company estimates that "robust" growth will continue, particularly in China and South and Southeast Asia, whose economies will expand and where more people will start to travel. "Growth in Asia is set to make it the largest overall market, with rapid growth in China making its domestic [travel] market the largest of all," according to the CMO.

 


"By 2038, 40 percent of [all] passengers will travel on an airline based in the Asia/Pacific area." Likewise, the document also predicts that by 2038 about 40 percent of new aircraft will be delivered to the region's operators.

 


<h2>Narrowbodies To Dominate</h2>

 


The forecast increase in Asia-Pacific demand will be the primary stimulus for airlines' acquisition of more than 13,000 narrowbody models that will account for about three-quarters of the region's deliveries. More than a fifth (22 percent) of new aircraft will comprise 3,800-plus&nbsp;widebody designs, according to Boeing, while remaining requirements will be 210 regional jets and 340 cargo aircraft (of all sizes).

 


Narrowbodies will remain the dominant sector, maintaining their present 72-percent share, while their numbers increase from 5,680 machines at the beginning of 2019 to 13,950 units in 2038—representing some 40 percent of the global fleet of single-aisle aircraft, say the manufacturer's analysts.

 


Among other-sized machines in Asia/Pacific, both smaller regional jets (RJs) and larger widebody designs are seen as declining very slightly, the two sectors each being reduced by a single percentage point to just one percent and 21 percent, respectively. Nevertheless, the RJ population will grow by about 85 percent–from 140 examples to an expected 260–alongside a predicted growth among widebodies from 1,710 to a much-larger 4,080, "driven by continued market fragmentation."

 


In the Asia-Pacific cargo fleet, numbers will grow by a small amount (just two percentage points) or, put another way, by a half–from four percent to six percent–as a share of the region's total fleet, from a population of 350 machines at the beginning of last year to a predicted 1,130 in 2038.

 


At 26 percent, airline traffic within Asia-Pacific represents the highest regional proportion of global traffic. The CMO predicts that by 2038 volume will have more than tripled to reach almost a third (32 percent, or more than 6,000 billion&nbsp;revenue passenger-kilometers [RPK]), equivalent to compound growth of 5.8 percent a year.

 


Boeing analysts have not only been looking forward. In retrospective consideration of Asia/Pacific market trends, they point out that the region's "impressive growth has increasingly shifted toward intra-regional [service] as air-travel growth to other regions has also been strong."

 


Air-travel capacity (available seat-miles [ASMs]) in Asia-Pacific increased almost 300 percent during 1998-2018, very much enhanced by "vast distances between countries, along with increasing economic ties and fast-growing economies within the region," says the CMO.

 


In turn, available capacity on flights to and from other regions grew by around 150 percent in that period; nevertheless, at a little more than 20,000 billion available seat-kilometers (ASK), volume still was about a third lower than local home-market travel, according to Boeing.

 


The smaller market in Asia-Pacific travel to and from the Middle East (seen as about 1,300 billion RPK per year by 2038) will have increased by 6.2 percent annually. Lower traffic levels on routes to Europe and North America are expected to double in the forecast period.

 


Overall, the manufacturer's forecasters see this region as benefitting from prevailing trends. "Asia/Pacific is home to some of the [world's] fastest-growing economies, [in which] strong economic and disposable-income growth are combining with new airline strategies and business models to spur above-average air-travel growth."

 


Also, national economies growing less fast could be stimulated by "liberalizing markets and increased airline competition" that jointly are seen boosting demand for travel. "Airlines in these more-mature economies are often seeing growth opportunities in long-haul markets, as well as connections to faster-growing economies within Asia."

 


Boeing concludes that despite Asia-Pacific's "heterogeneity [or diversity], many key demand structural forces will drive 5.5-percent average annual air-traffic growth for [the region's] carriers over the next two decades."

Boeing: Asia-Pac To Account for 30 Percent of Air Travel by 2038

The airframer sees a rising GDP driving growth in air travel.

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