The aviation industry has struggled significantly in the last year and a half due to the Covid-19 pandemic, but as revealed in the Cirium Fleet Forecast, the sector is now on its way towards recovery as the demand for new aircraft is expected.
In this context, the growth of China’s overall fleet in the coming years is the most impressive, which was also confirmed by another study from the Aviation Industry Corporation of China (AVIC).
Almost One Fourth to China
The Cirium Fleet Forecast provides a generally very optimistic prediction of the future of the aviation industry, as the passenger traffic is expected to grow by 3.7 % every year, which will subsequently require new aircraft.
China will have a very important share of the newly delivered aircraft, seeing as the growth of traffic will be over 6 % in the country. Thus, it will require a total share of 20 % of the total aircraft delivery globally to support this rise.
In contrast, the rest of the Asia-Pacific accounts for a share of 22 %, while airlines in North America will require 20 % of new aircraft and European airlines 17 %.
45,000 Aircraft by 2040
When it comes to the entire Chinese fleet, i.e. not only passenger planes, the country is also set to register jaw-dropping growth.
In this sense, AVIC predicts that the entire fleet will reach 45 thousand by 2040, an incredible rise from the current fleet of 3,000.
This fleet will consist of 10,000 helicopters (currently only 923), while the rest will be fixed-wing general aircraft.
Moreover, by 2040 the total amount of flight hours of the country’s general aviation sector is predicted to exceed 8 million, which is a very impressive increase compared to 2020s 984 thousand hours.