We think that over the next 20 years air travel will grow an average of 4.9% a year, driven by an annual GDP growth rate of 3.1% - both up slightly from last year’s forecast. Air cargo will grow at an average of 6.1% per year.

This means that the impacts of liberalization will continue. Airlines will continue to demand new airplanes so they can continue to respond to what passengers want: more nonstop, point-to-point flights, and more frequencies.

Current Market Outlook chart

As a result, I think we’ll see continued strong commercial airplane demand in the forecast period between now and 2025 - a $2.6 trillion market for new aircraft. That’s an increase of $500 billion over last year’s forecast.

And our forecast is up by about 1,500, to a projected 27,200 new airplanes over the next 20 years - including passenger airplanes and freighters.

You can see that single-aisles (737-size) will continue to be the majority of those new airplane deliveries - 61%. Twin-aisle jets in the category of 200-399 seats (767,777,787-size) will make up 23% of the demand. But I should point out that those same twin-aisles will comprise 45% of the dollar value of new deliveries.

Overall, the world commercial airline fleet will more than double over the next 20 years - to nearly 36,000 airplanes.

In the chart below, the figure of 17,330 represents the current worldwide commercial airplane fleet. 35,970 represents the size of the fleet we predict in 20 years. Current Market Outlook chart

So, we’re projecting 17,630 new commercial airplanes due to growth between now and 2025.

Some airplanes will need to be replaced due to retirements, and we project that number to be about 9,580 airplanes. In all, airlines will need about 27,210 new airplanes to handle growth and replacement.

Combined with a retained fleet of about 8,760 airplanes (which are out flying today and will still be in the fleet in 2025) you get a total worldwide fleet of about 35,970 airplanes.

One of the more interesting projections in our outlook is that a lot of the growth will be in the Asia-Pacific market. In fact, in terms of delivery dollars, Asia-Pacific will make up 36% of the value of the commercial airplanes market.

Bottom line: while I can’t yet provide a 500-year outlook all the way to the year 2525, I think I’ll go out on a limb and say that 20 years into the future at least, people will still be flying on airplanes, and we’ll still be making lots of them!

Official Boeing release is here….