By IANS,
Beijing: China’s commercial passenger aircraft will triple over the next 20 years driven by the country’s sustained economic growth, experts said.
US aircraft maker Boeing Co. forecasts that China will need 5,000 new planes to meet the rising demand from air travellers. The cost of the planes is valued at $600 billion.
Although high-speed railways and rising fuel costs could adversely affect the air industry, the national aircraft fleet will more than triple in size by 2030, Boeing noted.
About 84 percent of China’s new aircraft will be necessary to keep in step with the industry’s growth, which will also bring demand for about 70,000 pilots, said Randy Tinseth, vice president of marketing at Boeing Commercial Airplanes.
The sustained economic growth, trade activity, increasing personal income and continued market liberalization will be the driving forces in shaping China’s air travel market, China Daily Thursday quoted him as saying.
According to the Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC), passenger travel in 2010 increased by 16.1 percent compared with the figure in 2009. The average annual growth during 2006-2010 was 14.1 percent.
Boeing forecasts that China’s annual GDP growth will remain at seven percent in the next 20 years, which will drive growth for air travel at an average of 7.6 percent annually.
Boeing Wednesday released its outlook for China’s commercial airplane market through 2030. Tinseth said Boeing’s forecast evaluated all the factors affecting the aviation industry.
By 2012, China will have 13,000 km of high-speed rail, linking about 70 cities, the newspaper said.