Asia needs 4,300 planes

Asia needs 4,300 planes

HONG KONG (Dow Jones): Asia's airlines will need 4,300 new aircraft from now until 2018, a top executive of Airbus Industrie said Monday.

Adam Brown, Airbus' vice president for Asia, was presenting the European aircraft maker's 20-year projection of regional demand for planes by Asian airlines.

Asia-Pacific airlines will soak up 25 percent of the world's airliner production over the next 20 years, Airbus forecast.

Of the estimated 4,300 needed, about 2,400 will be needed just to meet growth in demand, while 1,900 planes will be needed to replace aging aircraft, Brown said.

Asian fleets will grow faster than fleets elsewhere in the world, he said, and flights will increase about 4.2 percent annually between now and 2018, or 130 percent in all.

In all, regional airlines will spend almost US$460 billion on new aircraft over the next two decades, Brown said.