PARIS—Boeing’s latest 20-year forecast for commercial aircraft demand is notable not for reflecting surging growth, but rather the evolving ways in how airlines are using their fleets.
The bottom-line numbers in the 2023 Commercial Market Outlook (CMO)—42,595 new deliveries through 2042, including 32,420 narrowbodies—are about 1% higher than the 2022 version’s comparable numbers. The largest segment-level change from last year is a 15% drop in projected regional-jet deliveries, to a new projected 20-year total of 1,810.
“We’ve seen a reduction in demand for regional jets just because of the fundamentals that are in front of us today—the economics that have changed over the last few years,” Boeing Commercial Airplanes VP Darren Hulst said.
The lack of regional jet demand is linked to the overall forecast’s relative flatness, Hulst explained. The regional segment—100 seats and under—is the one that will be most affected by emerging aircraft technologies, from small electric vertical-takeoff-and-landing vehicles (eVTOLs) and air taxis to advanced-propulsion large transport aircraft. Even then, most of the disruption over the next two decades is expected to be at the very low end.
“Most of the investments in the [advanced air mobility] market ... are focused on urban mobility, or very short-haul, small-aircraft capacity transportation,” Hulst said. “In most cases, we would consider those two segments of the market to be largely complementary to today’s aviation infrastructure. The smallest amount of investment is taking place in the types of markets that actually could disrupt or maybe impact regional capacity from a commercial standpoint. The fact that the forecast is largely flat versus last year is reflective of the fact that some of that growth is just not going to happen from a commercial aviation standpoint,” Hulst added.
Within mainline fleets, Boeing’s research shows several emerging trends. One is an increase in fleet commonality. When airlines put their aircraft down in 2020 in response to the COVID-19 pandemic and a related plummet in demand, they re-evaluated their fleets, prioritizing cost and efficiency. One result: fewer aircraft types at many airlines.
“About 40% of airlines worldwide have simplified their fleet in some way over the last four years,” Hulst said. “Seventy-five airlines of any sort of scale have removed at least one type [of aircraft], and in some cases up to four or five types, from their active fleet over the last four years.”
Boeing sees more airlines adopting the strategy.
“Simplification becomes a key element of how airlines are streamlining for efficiency,” Hulst said.
Another clear change is how airlines are using their fleets in response to shifts in travel patterns. The collapse of business travel, emergence of remote and hybrid working, and pent-up demand to take trips following long stretches of lockdown has shifted when people want to travel.
“A breakdown of global airline schedules shows Mondays, Thursdays and Fridays remain peak travel days, but we’ve seen a shift for weekend travel as leisure has taken a more important role in the market,” Hulst said. “Airlines have shifted dynamics in terms of how much capacity they have deployed on those days while pulling back a little bit in off the midweek days like Tuesdays and Wednesdays.”
Among Boeing’s key 2023 forecast figures: air traffic will outpace projected annual economic growth of 2.6%. The global fleet will increase at an average annual rate of 3.5%, nearly doubling to a total of 48,600 aircraft when factoring in new deliveries and projected retirements. About half of the current global fleet will be replaced during the forecast period, Boeing projects.
One key change in the 2023 forecast is the return of Russia and Central Asia, which was left out of the 2022 forecast due to “uncertainty” amid the war in Ukraine, which has effectively shut Russia out of the Western aircraft market. Boeing’s 2023 forecast sees the region accounting for 3% of the global fleet in 2042.
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