Boeing predicts surge in China passenger tide

by ASSOCIATE EDITOR AND CHIEF CORRESPONDENT, TOM BALLANTYNE  

October 1st 2019

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Whatever its problems on the home front, Boeing has not retreated from its bullish forecasts for aircraft sales in the long-term China market, although Mainland fleet expansion will be slower than the manufacturer forecast in 2018. Read More »

Last month in Beijing, Boeing Commercial Airplanes (BCA) vice president marketing, Randy Tinseth, said Chinese carriers would need 8,090 new planes, worth nearly US$1.3 trillion at list prices, to meet booming passenger demand, particularly to and from China’s second tier cities. The revised forecast was 5.2% higher than a year ago.

In the next 20 years, China’s air passenger traffic is expected to grow 6% a year, rather than the previous prediction of 6.2%. Its expansion rate is higher than Southeast Asia, Europe and North America, Tinseth said.

“China became our largest market last year. An expanding middle-income group, significant investment in infrastructure and advanced technologies that make airplanes more capable and efficient, continue to drive tremendous demand for air travel,” he said.

By 2023, eight more airports will have opened across China, including Beijing Daxing International this month. In the next five years, the compounded annual growth rate of flights that connect second-tier cities in China will be 11.3%, a much higher figure than the number of flights that connect major Mainland hubs and the nation’s smaller cities, Boeing said.

For long-haul international flights, the annual growth in the last five years was 35% for second-tier cities, said Tinseth. This year, China’s carriers are operating 132 direct international flights, accounting for 65% of the global market.

In the next two decades, Boeing predicted China would need 5,960 new single-aisle aircraft. Demand for wide-body airplanes will triple the nation’s current fleet by 2038. In addition, China will need a significant number of regional aircraft and cargo aircraft, the forecast said.

Asia-Pacific airlines would require 17,390 aircraft, valued at US$2.83 billion, for the period, BCA said. The region’s fleet of new airplanes would be divided into narrow-bodies (75%), wide-bodies (22%), regional jets (1%) and freighters at 2%.

Each year to 2038, Asia-Pacific airlines will need to collectively recruit a minimum of 12,000 new pilots, 12,450 new technicians and 16,150 new flight attendants, the manufacturer said.

BCA forecast the global airline fleet would need 44,000 new airplanes, valued at US$6.8 trillion, in the next two decades. Single aisle aircraft would make up 74% of the order book (32,420), wide-bodies 19% (8,340), regional jets 5% (2,240) and freighters 2% (1,040).

Mainland’s COMAC bullish on home market despite trade tensions The Commercial Aircraft Corporation of China (COMAC) has predicted its home market airlines will have a 10,344 aircraft fleet by 2038. Released at the Aviation China Expo in Beijing last month, the Civil Aircraft Market Forecast Report 2019-2038 said in the next two decades China’s airlines will add 6,119 new narrow-bodies of more than 120 seats, 2,128 new wide-bodies with more than 250 seats and 958 new regional jets of 50 plus seats to its national fleet. The estimated cost of the fleet expansion is US$1.4 trillion, based on 2018 list prices. By 2038, China’s revenue passenger kilometres (RPK) will reach 4.08 trillion kilometres, which will be 21% of global RPKs. Annual global fleet growth for the next two decades is forecast at 4.3%.