Airbus sees no softening in demand despite geopolitical headwinds

[HONG KONG] Airbus has not seen any softening in aircraft demand or deliveries due to geopolitical or supply chain headwinds, its Asia-Pacific president said on Tuesday (Sep 14).

“We continue to see strong demand,” Airbus Asia-Pacific President Anand Stanley said during a briefing in Hong Kong on its 2026-2045 market forecast focused on the Asia-Pacific region.

“Not only that, we continue to see a strong readiness to take deliveries and a strong uptick in deliveries across the board, and this is not just in Asia-Pacific, but we also see that we are continuing to do our deliveries in the Middle East,” he said.

Airbus forecasts about 42,000 new aircraft will be required globally over the next 20 years, and about 45 per cent of those will be delivered to the fast-growing Asia-Pacific region.

Francois Cabaret, Airbus’ head of global market forecast, said at the event that Chinese airlines face a huge catch-up in renewing their fleets.

Before the Covid-19 pandemic, Chinese airlines were taking about 400 deliveries a year, but the collective number from Airbus, Boeing and Chinese planemaker COMAC had since fallen to less than half of that, Cabaret said.

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Airbus data shows China, its single largest market for commercial jets, will need 8,830 new passenger aircraft over the next 20 years, India will need 3,480, and the rest of Asia-Pacific will require 6,880.

The forecast also highlighted diverging growth within Asia.

India remains the world’s fastest-growing air travel market, with Airbus raising its domestic traffic growth forecast to 9.3 per cent from 8.9 per cent, while cutting China’s to 4.7 per cent from 5.4 per cent. REUTERS