Boeing vice president commercial marketing Darren Hulst said the company expected to deliver 4,400 new aircraft to Southeast Asia as the region recovered from the COVID-19 pandemic between 2020 and 2039. Of the figure, a quarter would go to Indonesia.

“Indonesia is by far the largest market in the region and comprises slightly more than a quarter of the 20-year forecast,” Hulst told The Jakarta Post by email on Feb 26.

“The economies in Southeast Asia are not all moving at the same speed. However, the largest population and the most upside potential in terms of growth is definitely the Indonesian market,” he said separately on Thursday, at a virtual briefing on Boeing’s 2020 Commercial Market Outlook (CMO) for Southeast Asia.

Hulst said that single-aisle aircraft made up 81 percent of the projected 4,400 new airplanes, or 3,580 aircraft, followed by 17 percent of wide-body aircraft, or 760 planes. The remaining 2 percent was shared equally between regional jets and freighter aircraft with 30 planes each.

Aircraft manufacturers expect Indonesian demand to grow over the years in line with strong air traffic growth, driven by an expanding middle class and rising domestic flight activity due to the country’s archipelagic geography and, in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, its loose domestic travel restrictions.

The Boeing CMO projects that Southeast Asia’s overall air travel demand will grow 5.7 percent annually in 2020-2039 to become the second largest aviation market in the Asia Pacific behind China.

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