The airlines They plan to transport twice as many passengers within 20 years, thanks to growth driven mainly by Asia, the world’s leading organisation for the sector announced on Thursday. After 4.3 billion trips in plane in 2023, the International Air Transport Association (IATA) said in June that it expects nearly 5 billion euros for this year. trips.
This figure, if confirmed, would shatter the record of 4.54 billion trips recorded in 2019, just before the Covid-19 pandemic.
In the longer term, towards the year 2043, IATA “expects the number of air passengers to double,” compared to 2023, which would result in a figure of 8.6 billion passengers, thanks to a “average annual growth rate of 3.6%“, it said in a statement.
This dynamic will be uneven across continents, with the main drivers being in Asia and the Middle East, while other regions, such as Latin America, will experience more moderate growth, according to IATA.
Asia-Pacific will have, according to these projections, an annual growth rate of 4.6%, with strong figures in India (6.9%), Thailand and Vietnam (6.4%) and also China (5.8%).
In the Middle East and Africa, air travel is expected to grow. 3.6% annually over the next two decades.
The North American market would grow by 1.7% annual, and Europe a 2%In Latin America and the Caribbean, IATA forecasts growth of 2.9% in the next 20 years.
IATA’s projections, released ahead of the Farnborough air show in the UK, are consistent with those published on Monday by Airbus, which estimates that the commercial aircraft fleet will have doubled by 2043 to 48,230 aircraft, fuelled by the appetite of the Asian middle classes.
If these scenarios come to pass, the decarbonisation plans for the aviation sector will be complicated. In 2021, IATA, and then the States represented at the UN in 2022, have set themselves the goal of ensuring that aircraft do not contribute to global warming by 2050.
The main tool for this “net zero emissions” objective is to use non-fossil fuels made from biomass, and then from hydrogen, goals that will require colossal budgets.
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Source: Gestion
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