Airbus Sees Rebound In Plane Orders Strong Growth In Traffic Fuels Optimistic Outlook For Future

Airbus Industrie projected Tuesday that orders for jetliners will soar over the next 20 years as the troubled airline industry recovers from recent losses with strong growth in traffic.

Carriers will probably need 15,000 aircraft over the next two decades to keep up with growing numbers of passengers and to replace aging jets, said Adam Brown, a top planner at Airbus, the European aerospace consortium.

About 1,600 airplanes are already on order, leaving Airbus and U.S. rivals Boeing Co. and McDonnell Douglas Corp. to fight for orders on another 13,400 or so planes - worth $1 trillion at current prices - Brown said.

Some of the demand, perhaps 15 percent, can be met by airlines retooling used airplanes, Brown told reporters.

Despite a recession that handed the airline business record losses in the 1990s, Airbus projects air travel demand will grow at an average annual rate of 5.1 percent over the next 20 years. That would be a tripling of current demand.

The biggest growth will be in Asia, according to industry analysts.

Boeing executives also have said they expect business to rebound, but the company currently is reducing its work force again because of slack orders in recent months.

Airbus says more than 80 percent of the 7,300 jets now in use will have to be replaced, and many more new planes will be needed.

Airbus, a consortium of British, French, German and Spanish companies, says that by 2014, 46 percent of commercial jets will be wide-body models, compared to just 28 percent now.

Demand will be mostly in the 125-seat to 350-seat category, Airbus says. Airbus predicts that in the next two decades, airlines will demand 800 planes able to carry more than 500 passengers.

Airbus and Boeing have discussed jointly developing such a giant plane.