Airbus forecasts 48,000 aircraft to be in operation by 2038

The number of commercial aircraft in operation will more than double in the next 20 years to 48,000 planes worldwide, Airbus has forecast.

The European aerospace company said that despite mounting concerns about the effects of aviation and the climate crisis, it believes air travel will continue to grow rapidly.

Urbanisation and development will mean the emerging global middle class of air passengers could rise 50% by 2038 to almost 6 billion people.

Most of the expected 4.3% annual growth in air traffic will occur in the Asia-Pacific region, where demand for new planes is set to surpass that of Europe and North America combined.

Airbus executives said aviation growth had proved resilient in the face of economic and geopolitical shocks, such as war and oil price rises, and they expected it to continue.

Last year, the growth in flying exceeded predictions, with the number of flights per year up by 280m. Christian Scherer, the chief commercial officer of Airbus, said: “It is as if every single inhabitant of the US took another trip.”

Related: Airbus on course to overtake Boeing as biggest planemaker

The manufacturer expects about 60% of the global fleet of 22,680 passenger jets and freight aircraft to be replaced with new planes in the next two decades, which it said would “contribute to progressive decarbonisation of the air transport industry”.

Asked if “flight-shaming” could affect Airbus’s forecasts, Scherer said: “It’s not a concern. We’d rather see it fundamentally as an opportunity. Airbus sees itself as a champion of bringing global emissions down and lowering fuel burn.”

While newer models of plane are far lighter and consume much less fuel, aviation’s overall carbon emissions have grown due to the huge rise in passenger numbers. Airbus said that on average, fuel consumption by distance per passenger is 47% of what it was in 1990. However, the number of annual passenger flights worldwide has quadrupled to 4 billion during that period.

The average aircraft has more seats and spends 2.3 more hours per day flying than 20 years ago - a trend that suggests even more air journeys could come from the 39,000 planes Airbus forecasts to be delivered by 2038.

Bob Lange, the senior vice-president for business analysis at Airbus, said its forecast had not been tempered for potential flying restrictions, whether through government action or public pressure. He said: “Greta Thunberg says, listen to the scientists and be equitable. The growth we see is from routes that are developing.”

Chinese domestic flights are due to triple and overtake US domestic flights as the biggest source of air traffic within the next two decades, according to the Airbus forecast. Indian people are expected to take five times as many flights as they do now by 2038.

Lange said: “As we become more globalised there are more reasons to travel. The growth is largely coming from people who haven’t accessed air travel in the past. If the US decide to halve their travel, it’s not going to make a dent in people travelling for the first time.

“In the notion of what we’re going to do to protect our planet there has to be a notion of equity.” He argued that it would be wrong to say other people shouldn’t aspire to travel as we do today.

Scherer said the goal of halving aviation’s emissions by 2050 was “not talk”, but targets Airbus uses as anchors. As yet, no technology appears to exist that is compatible with continued growth in flying.

Airbus is exploring sustainable fuels and alternative propulsion. It hopes to fly a test plane, the E-Fan X, in 2021, which could mean short-range hybrid-electric flights are feasible by the mid-2030s, Lange said. “We need to do more, it’s not enough but we can’t do it purely on our own.”