KUALA LUMPUR: Southeast Asia (SEA) is the centre of gravity and the engine of growth of the aviation industry within the Asian continent.
Boeing commercial marketing vice president Darren Hulst said SEA is among the top three economies globally in terms of expected gross domestic product (GDP) growth rate over the next 20 years behind India and China.
"These are the market that will drive expansion and require the need to serve with a more efficient and broad network in the aviation market," he said at a virtual conference organised by Boeing on the outlook of commercial aviation in Southeast Asia, here today.
Hulst said SEA has a significant element of growth as it was not a replacement and matured market but rather with expansion opportunities for the aviation industry.
"It comes from the growth of the middle class and the development of infrastructure to facilitate even more growth.
"Asia's strength in terms of population and GDP will continue by end of 2030, which is expected to contribute almost half of the global GDP and be responsible for over 40 per cent of all aeroplane deliveries," he said.
Hulst said airlines will likely consider narrow-body or single-aisle aircraft, catering to short and medium-haul flights, while wide-body aircraft could be extensively used for air freight.
This was due to the reduction in supply for passenger flights as more commercial airlines began to utilise their aircraft for cargo on the back of rising demand for air cargo.
"We continue to monitor the market for our production rate and customers orders. The single-aisle market will recover the fastest.
"However, as we trace the recovery path, we are going to see increase focus for efficiency and capability among demand for wide-body aircraft and that will drive the production of this product segment," he said.
As the older and less efficient wide-body aircraft probably going to retire early, he said airlines would need to compete and better serve the market in the post-Covid-19 environment.
Hulst said widebody should be versatile that can carry both passenger and cargo efficiently at a cheap cost which could entice demand for this aircraft segment.
"Air freight is an important element for the global trade network because, in normal time, almost half of global air cargo was carried on commercial passenger aircraft.
"When the industry hit by the pandemic, it has changed the level of capacity as the industry has to carry air cargo.
"We saw a significant increase in the use of dedicated freighters and higher cargo yield and revenue for operators," he said.
Hulst said demand for air cargo began to skyrocket as airlines with wide-body capacity were flying passenger aircraft as dedicated freighters.
"This is because of the aircraft's flexibility to carry a large volume of air cargo long distance.
"We continue to see the trend especially through the first quarter of 2021 as passenger demand remains limited but compensated/buffered by significant demand for air freight," he added.
