Airbus expects the commercial aircraft services market to nearly double in value to $ 255 billion by 2042, according to its latest Global Services Forecast (GSF) reflecting the ‘Maintain’, ‘Train & Operate’ and ‘Enhance’ categories. Driving this momentum are rebounding air traffic as well as a demand for more digitally-enabled and connected aircraft.
The GSF sees more than 17,000 aircraft being replaced between now and 2042, as a result of continuous fleet modernisation and investment in latest generation aircraft. This will create growing market opportunities to reuse, repair and recycle.
“Airbus is well positioned to answer today’s and future services needs in order to support the industry doing more with less, increasing efficiency while reducing fuel consumption, emissions and noise,”
Cristina Aguilar Grieder, Senior Vice President Customer Services at Airbus
Airbus expects the market for ‘Maintenance’ to grow from US$ 108 billion to US$ 210 billion. The market to ‘Enhance’ aircraft is expected to grow from US$ 11 billion annually to US$ 28 billion US$ and the market for ‘Train and Operate’ from US$ 11 billion to US$ 17 billion in 2042.
As a result, Airbus foresees a need for an additional 2.2 million highly skilled people over the next 20 years, consisting of 680,000 new technicians, 590,000 new pilots and 920,000 new cabin crew.
Global aviation services will see its biggest growth in South Asia, China and the Middle East. The regions with the highest market volume remain North America, Europe, China and Asia-Pacific.
The GSF forecasts the services demand in commercial aviation over the next 20 years for aircraft above 100 seats plus freighters over 10 tons.
The GSF displays 3 market streams: ‘Maintain’ including maintenance, spares and aircraft lifecycle services; ‘Train & Operate’ with training and flight operations services; and ‘Enhance’ counting the demand for upgrades and connectivity & IFE services. It includes the required number of pilots, technicians and cabin crews to operate these aircraft. The services demand forecast breaks down the market by type of service, aircraft family and world region.
The GSF combines the drivers for services demand (Flight Cycles, in-service fleet, Aircraft age, fleet renewal and modernisation) with market measures connected to the Airbus Global Market Forecast (GMF).
Services market will support more than 24,000 aircraft in 2023 and the Global Services Forecast expects that the services demand for 2023 will be $130bn. The services market is expected to almost double over the next 2 decades reaching $255bn in 2042 (+3.6% CAGR – Compound Annual Growth Rate). Over the next 20 years there is a need for an additional 680,000 new technicians, 590,000 new pilots and 920,000 new cabin crew, totalling more than 2.2 million additional skilled people calling for the industry to intensify efforts to attract and train talents.
In 2042, the ‘Maintain’ stream accounts for over 80% of the total market ($210bn, CAGR +3.5% over the period), the ‘Train & Operate’ stream is to reach $17bn (CAGR +2.0%, training demand currently at a peak amid traffic recovery), and the ‘Enhance’ stream will see the highest growth (CAGR +5.1%, to $28bn in 2042.