SINGAPORE: American aircraft manufacturer Boeing has projected that Southeast Asia will need 4,225 new commercial and freighter airplanes by 2042 driven by airlines' thirst to raise capacity.
Boeing commercial marketing managing director for Asia Pacific David Schulte said the strong air travel demand in the region will see some 770 new widebody and 3,390 narrowbody aircraft, 45 regional jets and 20 freighter airplanes.
"Southeast Asia's growing middle class will fuel travel demand over the next 20 years.
"The single-aisle market is leading the global recovery with low-cost carriers in the region seeing tremendous growth," he said at in a media briefing at the Association of Asia Pacific Airlines (AAPA) 67th Assembly of Presidents recently.
According to Boeing's forecast, 70 per cent of the air travel market is driving by budget airlines with the B737 MAX family aircraft showing the biggest success in the region.
Schulte said the number of seats in the MAX aircraft has increased from 171 seats in 2015 to 179 seats in 2023.
"The new B737-8 can have 200 seats. It'll be a fantastic product to meet the growing needs of Southeast Asia airlines," he said, adding that the load factor in Asia is at 100 per cent level driven by high passenger demand for air travel.
He also said there are three factors that drive the load factor.
They are the fast recovery of domestic operations which led airlines now to move into expansion phase, capacity return in the market especially by the budget carriers as well as the leisure travel recovery in the region.
Boeing's 787 Dreamline family aircraft remains popular among air operators as the aircraft type allows airlines to fit the right size product to the right size market, said Schulte.
"There's no airplane ever in the history of widebody aircraft that is as successful as this airplane. Airlines continue to repurchase and we have 858 repeat orders from 55 repeat customers (for the B787 family type)," he added.
The B737 family aircraft continues to build strong sales especially in the United States, the Middle East, Australia and China with airlines such as United Airlines, Saudia, Eva Air, Qantas and Turkish Airlines as its customers.
Schulte said airlines are also looking at very large airplanes with about 340 or more seats per aircraft with Boeing's 777x aircraft type being the best widebody aircraft for its customers.
At the recent Dubai Airshow, Boeing received a massive order of 90 B777 aircraft from Emirates. This comprised 55 of the B777-9 variants and 35 B777-8 as well as five additional B787 Dreamliners.
Emirates' budget airline FlyDubai made its first widebody aircraft order of 30 B787-9 Dreamliners, diversifying its current fleet of all B737 narrowbody airplanes.