Boeing’s estimate of a 20-year demand for 39,620 new airplanes valued at $5.9 trillion reflects a 4.1 percent increase over last year’s forecast and the company’s increasing bullishness over the prospects for long-term economic prosperity. The projection, part of the company’s current market outlook (CMO) released on the opening day of the Farnborough Airshow yesterday, underscores a particularly sanguine projection for single-aisle jets, where low-fare and emerging market growth will result in a need for 28,140 airplanes, up 5 percent from Boeing’s forecast last year.
“Despite recent events that have impacted the financial markets, the aviation sector will continue to see long-term growth, with the commercial fleet doubling in size,” said Boeing Commercial Airplanes vice president of marketing Randy Tinseth. “We expect to see passenger traffic grow 4.8 percent a year over the next two decades.”
Tinseth added “there’s no question” that the heart of the single-aisle market centers around the new Boeing Max 8 and the current 737-800, a size of airplane that accounts for 76 percent of the global single-aisle backlog, according to Boeing’s calculations.
“The single-aisle market is a market that continues to be undersupplied…there’s more demand in that market than there is capacity,” said Tinseth. “Single-aisle markets continue to be in high demand. You can see that in terms of our production, and we’re now completely sold out in terms of [737] NGs. And you’re not seeing availability until the next decade in terms of the Max.”
Among widebodies, Boeing forecasts a demand for 9,100 airplanes over the period, reflecting a large wave of replacement demand between 2021 and 2028. Boeing projects a continued shift from very large airplanes to small and medium-size widebodies.
“We have a marketplace that, probably—after a decade of undersupply because of the challenges we had in terms of our development programs, as well as [those of] Airbus—now, we’re starting to see supply and demand in balance.”
In the still stagnating cargo market, Boeing projects a 4.2 percent traffic increase over the next 20 years, resulting a need for 930 new freighters and 1,440 converted freighters.
