Airbus, Boeing Estimate Heavier Air Traffic in Latin America

The world’s two biggest aircraft makers, Airbus from Europe and America’s Boeing, are foreseeing a 5-plus percent increase of air traffic over the skies of Latin America and the Caribbean in the next twenty years, according to stats revealed during the International Air & Space Fair still underway in Santiago de Chile.

These forecasts –subject to the industry’s normal going and ruling out the possibility of events similar to the 9/11 attacks- are specifically pointing to a 5.3 percent annual spike.

In line with Airbus’s reckonings, the expansion will demand more than 1,300 new planes over the next two decades, broken down in 1,290 commercial jetliners and 47 cargo aircraft.

For its part, Boeing is calculating over 2,000 airliners that Latin American carriers will order during that 20-year timeframe. Phillip St. Aubin, Boeing’s deputy vice president of international relations, indicated that his company will reserve 50 to 60 percent of its orders for Latin America and the Caribbean.

These data match all air traffic projections for the ongoing year, a period in which experts estimate a 7 percent hike in the number of airborne passengers and a 4.4 percent increase in flown cargo, according to information revealed by the International Air Transportation Association (IATA).