Alton Aviation Consultancy predicts that the worldwide fleet of commercial aircraft will grow by 3.3% annually for the next decade. In its 10-year forecast, Alton says that the number of commercial aircraft will increase from 29,000 to 42,000 by 2033, as some companies such as Boeing and Airbus rush to meet the current demand for new aircraft.
Alton predicts that air traffic will return to pre-pandemic levels in 2024 but warns that air traffic in some places not reach 2019 levels until early 2025.
Adam Guthorn, report co-author and managing director in Alton’s New York office, says: “While the aviation recovery is well underway, it remains unbalanced in several ways. While we forecast air traffic to return to pre-pandemic levels in 2024, this recovery will vary by region, with Asia Pacific not returning to 2019 levels until early 2025. This is underpinned by leisure travel recovering more quickly than business travel coming out of the covid pandemic, but with no long-term structural changes in business travel demand. OEMs impacted by skilled labour shortages, parts shortages and manufacturing delays have struggled to ramp up production at a quick enough rate to meet short-term demand for new aircraft.”
The forecast also does not expect much progress with sustainability until at least 2030.: Joshua Ng, a co-author of the report, points out that no clean sheet aircraft-family designs are expected to enter service prior to 2030 aside from the 777X and A220-500.
Ng says that with significant aircraft order backlogs for in-production aircraft types, “the immediate focus for airframe OEMs like Airbus and Boeing will be operational improvements aimed at increasing production rates to meet current demand, alongside some additional family derivatives”. He also notes that while clean sheet aircraft with new technology engines may offer a 10-15% reduction in carbon emissions, “this alone would still fall far short of current sustainability ambitions, which has shifted the conversation toward sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) that can be incorporated into existing aircraft in the near term”. Ng adds that electric and hydrogen propulsion systems “will start to have an impact at the lower seat-count aircraft types by 2030, and will eventually be incorporated on larger aircraft as technology matures, likely in the mid-to-late 2030s and beyond”.
Alton’s report also charts how supply chain challenges have resulted in aircraft retirements decreasing below the historical average while demand for leasing aircraft, particularly narrowbody jets, has surged, and finds that cargo conversion momentum will continue to be sustained by fleet replacement dynamics due to the age of the current fleet.
Click here for the report.