Military

Boeing Raises SE Asia Market Forecast by 670 Planes, $100 Billion

Paul Ausick

Published: February 15, 2016 8:25 am

Last Updated: January 13, 2020 1:11 pm

The Singapore Airshow officially opens on Tuesday, but at a pre-show conference on Monday, an executive from Boeing Co. (NYSE: BA) said the company expects Southeast Asia to need to buy 3,750 new passenger jets in the next 20 years, at a cost of $550 billion. In the Asia-Pacific as a whole, Boeing sees demand for 14,550 new aircraft with a total price tag of $2.2 trillion.

In a press release from February 2014, again at a conference preceding the Singapore Airshow, Boeing projected that the total demand for new airplanes in the entire Asia-Pacific region would total 12,820 airplanes valued at $1.89 trillion. The portion of that total that would be needed in Southeast Asia alone totaled 3,080 new airplanes at a cost of $450 billion.

Boeing’s Southeast Asia region includes Indonesia, Vietnam, Myanmar, Malaysia and the Philippines, among other nations in the region. It does not include India or China. Last August, Boeing forecast China’s demand over the next 20 years at 6,330 new passenger planes at a cost of $950 billion. Demand from India, also forecast last August, totals 1,740 new planes valued at $240 billion over the next 20 years.

Boeing has forecast that Southeast Asian demand for single-aisle, narrow-body planes like the 737 and the Airbus 320/321 will command 76% of the market as low-cost carriers dominate. Another 21% of new planes sold in Southeast Asia are forecast to be twin-aisle wide-bodies like Boeing’s 777 and 787 families and the Airbus 330 and 350 families.

In the jumbo class that includes Boeing’s 747 and the Airbus A380, Boeing now projects a total of 40 new planes over the next 20 years for Southeast Asia, 10 fewer than its forecast in 2014. For all Asia-Pacific airlines, Boeing now expects demand for jumbo-class planes to total 140 over the next 20 years, or just 1% of the total market for new planes. In 2014, Boeing had forecast demand for jumbos at 260, 2% of the market. Unless something changes, virtually all these sales will go to Airbus.