As we’ve recently reported, Boeing believes more aircraft will be needed in the Middle East over the coming decades. The company is now saying that the same should hold true for a part of the Western Hemisphere.
The aircraft manufacturing juggernaut said in a press release Monday it expects the Latin American commercial aviation market to grow at one of the more expedited rates of any region over the next 20 years. To support that growth, Boeing expects that 3,020 new airplanes will be needed in the region at the hefty cost of $350 billion.
“The economies of Latin America and the Caribbean will grow faster than the rest of the world over the long term,” said Van Rex Gallard, Boeing Commercial Airplanes’ V.P. of Sales in Latin America, Africa and the Caribbean. “This economic growth, coupled with rising incomes and new airline business models that give more people access to travel, is causing passenger traffic in the region to grow by 6 percent per year – well above the global rate.
“To accommodate that growth, we forecast that the region’s fleet will more than double,” he said.
Boeing expects 83 percent of the more than 3,000 new planes needed in the market to be single-aisle aircraft. The company rationalizes that need for that particular aircraft will be necessitated by great traffic growth within the area. The company projects that regional carriers in Latin America will need 340 double-aisle aircraft so that they can remain competitive on the routes traditionally frequented by airlines housed outside of the area.
In comparison to other regions, the aircraft that call Latin America and the Caribbean home are relatively new. In fact, the average age of an aircraft in the region has been less than 10 years since 2005, a substantial improvement over the 15 year age that had been previously been the norm. Boeing expects that trend will continue in the next 20 years—with nearly 60 percent of the current flight being replaced.
“Commercial aviation and economic expansion go hand-in-hand in this region and around the world,” Gallard said. “Passenger traffic grows as economies grow, and economies grow as commercial aviation grows. Every dollar that commercial aviation adds directly to a country’s GDP generates four times as much activity in the larger economy.”
Filed Under: Aerospace + defense
