Aircraft maker Airbus Group says the Asia Pacific region will be the largest aviation market in the next 20 years.
"Now, where will these aircraft be distributed around the world? Very interestingly, 40 percent of them will come to the Asia Pacific region, 13,000 out of 33,000, which means that there will be more aircraft coming to Asia pacific than to North America and Europe together. This is quite striking," said senior marketing vice president of Airbus, Francois Caudron.
Caudron made the comments at China's Zhuhai Air Show. He estimates total demand for Airbus planes in the next 20 years to be about 6000 passenger jets, worth about $1 trillion. Meanwhile, emerging rival Commercial Aircraft Corporation of China forecasts the global airline industry will need 40,000 new planes worth $5 trillion. And a fifth of those will be purchased by Chinese buyers.