Airbus expects demand for commercial aircraft to remain resilient despite geopolitical tensions and continuing supply-chain challenges, with the Asia-Pacific region emerging as the biggest source of long-term growth in global aviation.
The European aircraft manufacturer said airlines have shown no signs of pulling back on orders or slowing their acceptance of new aircraft, even as the industry continues to contend with economic uncertainty, geopolitical disruptions and constraints across the aviation supply chain.
"We continue to see strong demand," Airbus Asia-Pacific President Anand Stanley said during a briefing in Hong Kong on Tuesday, as the company unveiled its 2026-2045 market forecast for the region.
The strength of demand is also being reflected in deliveries, Stanley said, pointing to a broad-based improvement that extends beyond Asia-Pacific.
"Not only that, we continue to see a strong readiness to take deliveries and a strong uptick in deliveries across the board, and this is not just in Asia-Pacific, but we also see that we are continuing to do our deliveries in the Middle East," he said.
Airbus deliveries have increased by 9% so far this year compared with the same period in 2025, according to Stanley, underscoring the continued appetite among airlines for new, more fuel-efficient aircraft.
The company forecasts that airlines around the world will require about 42,000 new aircraft over the next 20 years, with approximately 45% of those deliveries destined for the fast-growing Asia-Pacific market.
The region's growth is being driven by expanding middle classes, rising incomes, urbanisation and increasing demand for air travel between emerging population centres. Airbus expects passenger traffic in Asia-Pacific to grow by an average of 5.1% annually over the next two decades.
China faces fleet renewal challenge
China is expected to remain the largest individual market for commercial aircraft, although its growth outlook has been revised lower compared with Airbus' previous forecast.
Airbus estimates that Chinese airlines will require 8,830 new passenger aircraft over the next 20 years. India, meanwhile, is expected to need about 3,480 aircraft, while the rest of Asia-Pacific will require another 6,880.
Francois Cabaret, Airbus' head of global market forecast, said Chinese airlines also face a significant backlog in fleet renewal following the disruption caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Before the pandemic, Chinese airlines were receiving around 400 aircraft a year, Cabaret said. Since then, however, combined deliveries from Airbus, Boeing and China's own commercial aircraft manufacturer COMAC have fallen to less than half that level.
That shortfall points to a substantial potential replacement and expansion market as Chinese airlines seek to modernise their fleets and respond to future passenger growth.
Airbus has nevertheless reduced its forecast for Chinese air-traffic growth to 4.7% annually, from its previous estimate of 5.4%.
Cabaret said the revision was linked primarily to broader economic conditions rather than concerns that China has too much airline capacity.
India, by contrast, continues to stand out as the world's fastest-growing major air-travel market. Airbus has raised its forecast for India's domestic traffic growth to 9.3% a year, up from its previous estimate of 8.9%.
Smaller cities to reshape aviation demand
The Airbus forecast also points to a significant shift in where future air-travel demand will originate.
Cabaret said global urbanisation is increasingly moving beyond major metropolitan centres toward smaller and secondary cities. Airbus expects around 600 new small and medium-sized cities to emerge over the next 20 years, creating opportunities for new airports, routes and aircraft services.
That shift could reshape the aviation market by making direct connections between smaller cities commercially viable, reducing the need for passengers to travel through major aviation hubs.
Aircraft design will play an important role in that transition.
Stanley said Airbus' smaller A220 narrow-body aircraft has already enabled more than 400 new routes globally and could potentially unlock another 800 city pairs in Asia-Pacific.
The larger A321XLR, meanwhile, could create more than 2,200 potential new routes across the region, Airbus estimates. Its appeal lies in its ability to offer the range traditionally associated with larger wide-body aircraft while retaining the economics and operating flexibility of a single-aisle jet.
For airlines, such aircraft can make thinner long-distance routes more economically viable, while giving passengers more direct connections between cities that previously lacked nonstop services.
Asia-Pacific remains aviation's growth engine
The outlook reinforces Asia-Pacific's position at the centre of the aviation industry's long-term expansion.
While mature markets are expected to continue growing, the combination of population growth, urbanisation, rising disposable incomes and expanding airline networks is expected to generate particularly strong demand across Asia.
Airbus' forecast suggests that nearly half of all new aircraft required worldwide over the next two decades will be delivered to airlines in the region.
For manufacturers, the scale of that demand represents a major opportunity. For airlines and airports, however, the expected expansion also brings pressure to develop infrastructure, secure aircraft and engines, train crews and accommodate increasingly complex international and domestic networks.
Despite those challenges, Airbus says there is little evidence so far that geopolitical tensions or supply-chain constraints have materially weakened airlines' appetite for new aircraft.
The company's latest forecast therefore presents a picture of an aviation market that is still expanding, but with growth increasingly concentrated in emerging markets such as India and across Asia-Pacific's secondary cities.