Boeing more bullish on market for jetliners

Boeing is raising its 20-year prediction for worldwide airplane sales to 34,000 jets, enough to double the size of the world’s fleet, as more people travel in China, India, and other emerging markets.

The airplane maker and defense contractor predicted Tuesday that $4.5 trillion worth of planes will be sold. It will have to compete with Airbus and other competitors including Bombardier, Embraer, and China’s state-owned COMAC for those sales.

The projection is 500 planes higher and a half-trillion dollars more expensive than the previous year’s estimate. Boeing expects airlines to shift toward slightly larger planes with higher price tags, accounting for most of the additional spending.

The world’s airlines fly almost 20,000 planes today. That number is expected to rise to almost 40,000 by 2031, Boeing said.

Boeing and Airbus are both speeding up production to meet a growing order backlog. Airbus, based in France, announced on Monday that it will begin assembling A320s in Alabama, with deliveries to begin in 2016. Boeing is speeding up production of its competing 737.

Boeing said the Asia Pacific region will be the biggest market for new planes, with a potential for 12,030 aircraft there through 2031.

Low-cost airlines are stimulating demand for air travel. Those airlines have been especially important in Asia, because they’re making air travel affordable for people who previously didn’t fly, said Randy Tinseth, vice president of marketing for Boeing.

China’s expanding light rail service will steal some passengers from the airlines, he said. But the investment in rail as well as new airports should stimulate the economy there and air traffic – and demand for airplanes – will still grow. The company expects half of all airline traffic to begin or end in the Asia Pacific region by 2031.

“As we look to the future, clearly the center of the marketplace will be the Asia-Pacific region,” Tinseth said.

Boeing predicts more than 23,000 of the 34,000 planes that will be sold will be single-aisle planes such as its 737 and the competing Airbus A320. It also predicted sales of 7,950 larger planes such as its new 787.

Tinseth said Boeing is aiming to build about as many of the single-aisle jets as Airbus. For the larger wide-body jets, he thinks Boeing can have a larger market share than Airbus does.

The Chicago company reduced its projection for the number of freighter airplanes that will be sold.