Two workers walk under the wing of a 737 Max plane at the Boeing factory in Renton, Washington, on March 27, 2019.
Lindsey Wasson | Reuters
Despite the Covid pandemic that ended two years of growth for the commercial aircraft market, Boeing expects the industry to grow in the next 20 years.
The company’s annual market outlook predicts that the global fleet of commercial aircraft will rise from 25,900 in 2019 to 49,405 aircraft in 2040, with almost 90% of these aircraft being new models entering service during the period.
In addition, Boeing projects that the global aerospace industry, including defense and services, will reach $ 9 trillion in the next decade. That’s $ 500 billion compared to the same forecast last year. It is also the largest amount the company has projected for the industry in a ten-year period.
“It’s a promising vision and tells us it’s time to start preparing for growth,” said Marc Allen, Boeing’s director of strategy.
Driving it all will mean an expected recovery of air transport, especially on international routes that have been devastated by the pandemic. International travel is down 74% compared to 2019, while domestic travel is down only 16%. In late 2023 or early 2024, Boeing expects world travel to return to 2019 levels.
“The industry had essentially two years of growth ending with the pandemic,” said Darren Hulst, Boeing’s vice president of commercial marketing.
In its annual global market outlook published in 2019, long before the pandemic, Airbus had predicted that the world would need 47,680 aircraft by 2038.
The recovery that began last year with Boeing and Airbus delivering 723 aircraft is gaining a slow but steady pace, as airlines are expected to deliver nearly 900 Boeing and Airbus aircraft by 2021. By the end of the decade, the industry is expected to deliver more than 19,000 new aircraft, most of which are single-aisle aircraft such as the Airbus A320 and the Boeing 737 Max.
“We typically see about 15% of the fleet withdrawn every five years,” Allen said. “After the September 11 crisis, after the global financial crisis, we saw these figures rise to 20%. What we are seeing now in the behavior of airlines is that these retirements for five years will be From 20% to 25% of the total fleet “.
Boeing’s prospects come as the company steadily increases deliveries of 737 Max aircraft after a year and a half of grounding by regulators around the world. The company resumed deliveries in November, but has been conservatively increasing production as it removes more than 400 Max aircraft that were built but never delivered when the plane landed. The last of the Max planes, new and finished, is expected to be delivered by the end of next year.
Just as demand for new commercial aircraft is expected to grow steadily over the next two decades, the same can be said for cargo aircraft. Growth is driven by rising demand for flying goods around the world. In 2019, just over 1,000 cargo planes were in service worldwide. It is expected to increase by 70% by 2040, when about 3,500 cargo planes are expected to be in service.
Allen said Boeing has already begun meeting demand for more cargo planes by preparing to expand eight conversion lines where old passenger planes become carriers. “In 2022 we will increase 60% to 13 conversion lines worldwide,” Allen said.
–CNBC’s Meghan Reeder contributed to this article.