Airbus raises its forecast for demand

Despite concerns that current financial market turmoil could upend a global economic recovery, the European plane maker Airbus raised its long-range forecast for commercial aircraft demand Monday, citing expectations of increasing wealth in fast-growing Asia and the continued expansion of low-cost airlines in the United States and Europe. Airbus predicted that airlines would buy 27,800 new jets by 2030, up 7 percent from a forecast of 26,000 planes, which was made last December before a wave of orders this year for new Airbus jets from Asian carriers. The company, based in Toulouse, France, said the new orders would be worth $3.5 trillion, up 9.4 percent from the $3.2 trillion forecast nine months ago,reported the New York Times Monday. In June, Boeing, based in Chicago, predicted sales of 33,500 new jets through 2030, worth $4 trillion. Boeing’s figures include smaller regional jets with 70 to 100 seats, whereas Airbus’s forecast is for aircraft that seat 100 or more passengers. Airbus said it expected passenger traffic globally to grow at an annual rate of 4.8 percent over the next two decades, just below the approximately 5 percent average rate of the past 30 years. Boeing’s most recent forecast predicted a growth rate of 5.3 percent. According to the Airbus forecast, more than a third of the demand for new planes will come from the Asia-Pacific region, particularly from India and China, where domestic air passenger traffic is expected to grow at an average annual pace of 9.8 percent and 7.2 percent, respectively, over the next two decades. This year Airbus received several major orders from Asia for its single-aisle jets, including a record-breaking $18 billion deal for 200 planes from AirAsia, the Malaysian low-cost airline, and two large deals with Indian carriers: a $16.6 billion sale of 150 planes to GoAir and a 180-plane order from IndiGo, worth $16 billion. By 2030, Airbus predicted, travel within Europe and North America will each represent about one-fifth of global passenger traffic and new aircraft demand, down from just under one third each today. Nonetheless, Airbus forecast that domestic travel within the United States would represent the biggest region in terms of overall traffic flows, as measured by the revenue that airlines earn per available seat for each mile flown, at 11.1 percent of the total. Europe would represent 7.5 percent of revenue per seat mile. John Leahy, the chief salesman at Airbus, acknowledged that the current economic climate was likely to lead to below-average growth in demand for air travel at least through 2012, but he emphasized that the long-term growth trends in air travel had remained consistent for at least three decades