Boeing raises forecast for airliner demand by $500 bn

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US aircraft maker Boeing raised its 20-year forecast for global demand for airliners by $500 billion (396 billion euros) on Tuesday.

Boeing said it now saw the global market doubling to 34,000 airliners worth $4,500 billion, from 33,500 aircraft worth $4,000 billion which it had forecast last year.

The global civil aviation market had held up even during the tough years and this had driven up the rate at which airliners were produced, the vice president for marketing in Boeing's commercial aviation division, Randy Tinseth, said in a statement.

Boeing based its forecast on an assumption that world airline traffic would grow by 5.0 percent per year for the next two decades. Its main rival, the European manufacturer Airbus, also expects traffic to increase at about this rate.

The biggest increase in deliveries will be to the Asia-Pacific region. Boeing expects that about one third of all airliners built, or about 12,030 planes, will be delivered to this region.

But Boeing lowered its forecast for deliveries of cargo planes owing to a slowing of the market for air freight.

Even so, it said that the market for cargo aircraft would almost double from 1,740 planes in 2012 to 3,200 in 2031.