IATA: China to overtake US as world’s largest aviation market by 2022

IATA revised its annual 20-year air passenger forecast upward by over a half-billion passengers Oct. 24, and indicated China will overtake the US as the world’s largest aviation market “around 2022,” several years faster than previously predicted. In its new 20-year Air Passenger Forecast, IATA now predicts 7.8b passengers will travel by air in 2036, nearly doubling the 4b air passengers expected in 2017. IATA highlighted the Asia-Pacific region as the primary source of over half the new passengers expected by the next two decades. China’s overtaking of the US as the world’s largest aviation market will come as a result of slightly faster Chinese growth combined with slightly reduced US growth. In its aviation market forecast (defined as traffic to, from and within a country), IATA foresees the UK will fall to fifth place on the global scale by 2036, being surpassed by India in 2025 and Indonesia in 2030. Rounding out the top 10 markets in 20 years, in order, will be Japan, Spain, Germany, Turkey and Thailand. France and Italy will be out of the top 10 by about 2032. “Increasing demand will bring a significant infrastructure challenge,” IATA DG and CEO Alexandre de Juniac said. “The solution does not lie in more complex processes or … bigger airports, but in harnessing the power of new technology to move activity off-airport, streamline processes and improve efficiency.” China will be the world’s fastest-growing market, IATA forecasts, with the country adding 921m passengers for a total of 1.5b passengers by 2036. <br/>