Boeing Forecasts $3.2T Market Driven by Demand for More Fuel-Efficient Aircraft
11 July 2008
Boeing forecasts a $3.2 trillion market for new commercial airplanes over the next two decades, driven by the increasing demand to replace older, less efficient aircraft.
The Boeing 2008 Current Market Outlook, Boeing’s 20-year forecast of air travel, calls for a market of 29,400 new commercial airplanes (passenger and freighter) by 2027, with a balanced demand in aircraft by region. The forecast takes into account the industry’s near-term challenges, including a slowing worldwide economy, surging fuel prices, slowing traffic growth in some markets, and concerted action by airlines to balance costs and revenues.
The influence of current market conditions is clearly reflected in the 2008 outlook, with replacement airplanes taking a greater share of demand (43%) than previously forecast (36%) due to the loss of economic viability of older aircraft in light of higher fuel costs.
In addition, Boeing is forecasting a slightly smaller fleet size at the end of the 20-year period (35,800) than predicted in the previous outlook (36,400). Compared with today’s world fleet of 19,000 units, this represents an annual increase of 3.2% per year—the same as the estimated economic growth rate.
Also noteworthy is the fact that as a result of strong orders the last three years, more than 30% of the forecast is already in backlog.
These new airplanes will accommodate a forecasted 5% annual increase in global air travel, and a 5.8% annual increase in air cargo traffic. Over the next 20 years, passenger and cargo airlines will take delivery of:
Regional Jets: 2,510 units ($80 billion). Declining segment as airlines “up-gauge” to single-aisles due to capacity, economic, and environmental constraints.
Single-Aisles: 19,160 units ($1,360 billion). Largest segment by units.
Twin-Aisles: 6,750 units ($1,470 billion). Largest segment by investment.
747 and larger: 980 units ($290 billion). Small but significant market.
Single-aisle airplanes will make up the bulk of the deliveries during the next 20 years. Strong domestic and intra-regional air travel growth in emerging Asia-Pacific markets, along with continued growth of low-cost carriers worldwide is driving demand in this segment.
Maybe the Defense Department should declassify some of the top secret propulsion technology being used on aircraft at Area 51 for the good of all mankind.
Posted by: ejj | 11 July 2008 at 01:59 PM
Boeing is also going to have big competition in the near future from the new Chinese Aviation Industries Corp in Shanghai.
Posted by: gary | 11 July 2008 at 02:11 PM
I am curious to see how much fuel saving they will get by moving to aircraft like the Dreamliner, we hear that is 20% but compared to what ? there is so many different type of aircraft model flying nowadays. because 3 T$ even on 2 decades seems a lot just to save 20 %
Posted by: Treehugger | 11 July 2008 at 06:52 PM
Boeing already has a research effort underway into biomass based jet fuels.
http://blog.wired.com/cars/2008/06/aviation-gets-b.html
But at this point, they're going to have to do a lot better than that. They're going to have to get into the fuel business.
Commercial aviation is barely viable at $150/barrel let alone $200. I don't care how "efficient" the planes are. Even if they were 50% more efficient, they still burn an ever more expensive and dwindling non-renewable resource. Unless someone comes up with a miracle, or people can afford a doubling or worse in ticket prices, there won't be airlines left in 5 years to buy any planes at all.
Without renewable fuels, it will only be chartered luxury Gulfstreams for the super-rich. Unless someone figures out how to make synthetic jet fuel and quick, the rest of us will be taking the train.
Posted by: BlackSun | 11 July 2008 at 07:33 PM
We can't take the train. It doesn't work. Even when it does, it takes four - five hours to get from Portland to Seattle--a distance of 180 miles. And that's on a "talgo", which is a supposedly faster spanish train. If we had a high speed train system, using TGV or AVE trains, you could travel from Portland to Seattle in 40 minutes, San Francisco in 2 1/2 hours and Denver in 4 hours.
It would take a trillion dollars to build a national high speed rail network. We had our chance in the early 2000s, before the Medicare and Social Security timebombs went off. But no, we spent that money in Iraq.
At least we have Greyhound.
Posted by: Franklin Rodeaux | 11 July 2008 at 10:25 PM
Fortunately, thanks to extensive research into oil-laden algae, the same refining process that turns this type of algae into diesel fuel and heating oil could be used to produce Jet A kerosene from the same renewable source. As such, within 15-20 years most of our motor fuels will be coming from algae, which unlike plant-based biomass won't interfere with food production or even require precious fresh water (oil-laden algae can grow in seawater in needed).
Posted by: Raymond | 11 July 2008 at 10:39 PM
Franlin-R
why 1 trillions $ to build a fast train network would be expensive when it will cost 3 trillions $ to renew the aircraft fleet ?
plus the time is not necessarily an issue, in a train you can sleep, you work, you can go the restaurant, you can phone, you can read, watch the land around, in an aircraft you can do nothibg, Always faster and then ? what benefit we get of always faster ? aircraft should be banned for trip less than 300 miles.
Posted by: Treehugger | 11 July 2008 at 10:57 PM
The best way to save fuel is to fly less. Most trips are not necessary. They may be fun and seem important, but most are not needed.
Posted by: sjc | 12 July 2008 at 01:49 AM
Treehugger: in a train you can sleep, you work, you can go the restaurant, you can phone, you can read, watch the land around, in an aircraft you can do nothibg,
What are you babbling about? In an airplane, you can sleep, you can work, you can read, you can watch the land around (from a much better perspective too). You can't go to a restaurant -- it comes to you instead (quality notwithstanding). You can't phone, but that is a social problem: I could run a train or bus service that forbids phone calls, out of respect for my already stressed customers.
Yes, stressed. I personally despise public transportation. Bus, plane, train all make me ill. Literally: I suspect that the majority of the colds I catch are while subjecting myself to these transportation systems. But the endemic over-crowding endemic is especially loathsome. You may not come down with a case of Ebola, or whatever that guy across the aisle is sneezing into the air, but the neutron-star density of humanity is present every single time you set foot on the vehicle.
This is why faster is better. Why faster faster is better better. "Get me out of here!" So:
Always faster and then ?
Yes. YES! Some people value their time.
aircraft should be banned for trip less than 300 miles.
Treehugger, if someone has a gun to your head, forcing you to take airplane trips under 300 miles, I suggest you call the police.
BlackSun: Unless someone figures out how to make synthetic jet fuel and quick, the rest of us will be taking the train.
We already know how to make the stuff. It is simply a question of capacity.
Posted by: mdf | 12 July 2008 at 05:17 AM
Very High Speed electric trains, PHEVs and BEVs are viable (even essential) in a world with diminishing liquid fuel supplies, increasing GHG and various harmful pollutants.
One (or more) avoided oil wars could pay for it in the next decade or two.
The choice is ours to make.
Will we make the right choice?
Posted by: HarveyD | 12 July 2008 at 08:11 AM
If aviation companies get into the biofuel business why wouldn't they sell it on the open market for profit rather than use it for aviation? It seems to me government has to get involved unfortunately.
Posted by: | 12 July 2008 at 08:32 AM
mdf
Agoraphobia is out of the topic of this site, but even so you would feel better in a train than in a plane when it comes to crowd phobia.
American value their time yes, the fisrt thing would be to put a law that oblige companies to give 5 weeks vacations a years to everybody as it is practiced in any civilized countries (except america). Second you might value your time but what american do with their life is of little value anyway : their cultural life is close to zero, they speed their vacation time in Las Vegas or driving useless Gazz Guzzler to the shoping mall where they can consume to their heart contents since they have nothing else to do, or possibly they can stuff themselves with the worse food in the world in the Mac Donald or the KFC that make them obese at 30% so that they can justify their need for a truck to carry themselves and all the crap they bought at the shopping center with their debt making credit card.
if this world collapse tomorrow, I am not sure there is much to regret in it.
Posted by: Treehugger | 12 July 2008 at 08:47 AM
Treehugger....
'if this world collapsed tomorrow, I am not sure there is much to regret in it.
What...not even treehugging to regret? I was just hugging a sweet birch this morning....really quite an experience...smooth white paper-like bark with splittings that curl on all 3 trunks. If I had put it off till next week, & the world had ended, I would have missed it...California Sequoias & Colorado aspens are cool too.
I would miss my mountain hikes, my astronomy observations(galaxy superclusters are the best)...love my electric bicycle travels with my ailing body....
Agree that Las Vegas & giving money to the Mafia isn't worth anything....but the open desert, Hoover Dam, Indian tribes, & multiple rock presentations of extraordinary hues is worthy of multiple vacations.
Baby smiles, animals, trees, plants & her art painting keep my wife exploring the cosmos, even with her many problems.
So travel to where you need, folks & discover the Universe.
Posted by: litesong | 12 July 2008 at 09:58 AM
As jet fuel prices are likely to keep on increasing and as the segment of regional jets is declining, I think there will be a growing market for regional turbo-prop planes.
Posted by: Jorge | 12 July 2008 at 11:15 AM
See this note about turboprop planes:
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2008/06/turboprop-aircraft-comeback.php
Posted by: Jorge | 12 July 2008 at 11:19 AM
litesong
I was refeering to this world of Mc Donald, Wal-mart Disney World, Las-Vegas, Hollywood, Coca-Cola and other monstruosities that america post-world war II has created with all its devastating hedge effects like endemic obesity, deculturataion, urban violence, global warming, pollution, wasteful habits, urban sprawl, unhability to think.
of course there is a lot a things to enjoy on planet earth, I am a sailor and each time I anchor in a desert bay away from urban place I am amazed by what is a real starry sky with no light pollution, you could trash the whole hollywood without regret just for this, something that someone who lives in a urban environment has no clue of what it is
Posted by: Treehugger | 12 July 2008 at 11:30 AM
Boeing's "Business as Usual" market outlook, like the one they deliberately changed in 1997 to try and stop the A380. The aviation industry is now in meltdown due to fuel prices which are just going to keep going up. The US airlines have lost so much money in the last 25 years that really they must have been bankrupt all along - where does the loot come from to keep them going? By this time next year, I forecast the US airlines will have cut at least 50% of their capacity as oil goes well over $200 a barrel. The military will never release Advanced Technology - they operate a vicous global policing operation to stop anybody else developing it too, all the Electrogravitic information is in the patent record, just like unlimited range EVs but no, because Kissinger considers us all to be useless eaters (except him and his "Ubermannen" friends), the world has fried and is planned to go down the oiliess tubes.
And now we have plastic aeroplanes - the 787 is a sick joke, it was too heavy so they reduced the strength of the wingbox - the central core structural weight bearing heart of the aircraft. When the first one crashes and its carbon fibre fuselage disintegrates into a zillion shards, the lawyers will have a field day - “so Mr Boeing, you were building the Golden Gate Bridge and it was too heavy, so to save weight you reduced the size of the suspension cables” - Jury - corporate manslaughter verdict. That is what they did to the 787. Plastic and aeroplanes do not mix - keep it for Airfix.
Aviation has been so sabotaged for 50 years it is just Beyond - there are no words. And most people still believe the risible set that even a Hitchcock movie would have done better really depicts Man on the Moon. No wonder Kissinger thinks you are useless.
On current trends, air travel will be 1960s style for the elite only by 2012.
Posted by: Emphyrio | 12 July 2008 at 01:05 PM
mdf: Should have said "unless someone figures out how to make lots of synthetic jet fuel and quick..."
Isn't it like 1.6 million barrels per day in the U.S.?
That's a lot of algae. Boeing seems to have the vision for it, but I don't think they understand how heavily their future depends on it.
Posted by: BlackSun | 12 July 2008 at 01:23 PM
Emphrio...So the best company in the world who has battled an unendingly subsidized multi-national Airbus to a draw with huge numbers of ever more safe, efficient & variant aircraft, has constructed the worst airplane in the world.
Sounds like someone trying to give the unraveled & unwired 380 some hope.
Posted by: litesong | 12 July 2008 at 06:51 PM
If we are unable to maintain our highways as some suggest then a market for diesel powered low and slow bush planes opens up. Diamond Aircraft recently demonstrated a transatlantic flight in a twin diesel plane which averaged 30 mpg at an average speed of 180 mph. There is not much need to fly over 100 mph so even better mileage is possible for short haul flights which can carry vital cargo to any of the 5,000 small airports in the US. The rich may have their Gulfstreams but the rest of us may be grateful for diesel Cessnas bringing us our medications or that vital part for a biofueled tractor.
Posted by: tom deplume | 13 July 2008 at 12:17 PM
Tom, you forget. Biofuel steals food from the poor.
Posted by: | 14 July 2008 at 08:07 AM
How would fuel made from stover via F-T steal from the poor? Using the inedible parts of plants for fuel could lower production costs and thereby make food more affordable for the poor. The world has shared its food supply with draft animals for thousands of years using 1/3 or more of all acreage in the process. The food vs fuel issue is completely bogus.
The solution to feeding the world's poor lies in either buying the food for them or paying them more so the food becomes more affordable. Keeping America's farmers on the edge of poverty is no way to insure no one goes hungry.
Posted by: tom deplume | 14 July 2008 at 12:27 PM
It should also be remembered that "rich" people are wealthy because they are lazy, snobby criminals. Poor people and those of the marginal middle class, are hard working, good people whom the rich people have stolen from.
Big agriculture that is behind 90% corn in North America. Big agriculture is run by rich people. Bigger profits from corn stover accompany rising corn prices - gouged from the poor. Biofuels steal from the poor.
Posted by: claswars | 14 July 2008 at 03:53 PM