Jetrader - Summer 2015 - 20

State of the Regions

It's Finally Happening...
Asia will be the dynamo of the
industry for years to come

F

By John Grant, Executive Vice President, OAG Aviation, and Mark Clarkson, Business Development Director, ASPAC

For many years, the airline industry has been saying that its center
of gravity would be shifting eastwards; it finally happened in the
first quarter of this year with Dubai International becoming the
largest airport in the world, replacing London Heathrow in that
No. 1 position. There is little doubt that having reached that
position, Dubai is unlikely to be seriously challenged in the next
decade; other competing airports have a major domestic element
to their traffic or are capacity constrained and, thereby, offer
limited scope for further expansion.
It's also clear that in North America and Europe, the market
has reached a point of maturity. Within North America, the number of scheduled flights planned in summer 2015 will be some
9 percent less than operated in summer 2011 as a mix of airline

Map 1 - B787 Scheduled Routes Summer 2013

Source: OAG Schedules Analyser

Map 2 - B787 Scheduled Routes Summer 2015

Source: OAG Schedules Analyser

consolidation and reduced regional operations impact frequency
and, to a lesser degree, available capacity. In Europe, however, the
number of scheduled flights planned for summer 2015 shows no
growth against summer 2011, but a continuing growth of low-cost
carrier frequency share rising from approximately 29 percent to
36 percent and an even higher capacity share of over 45 percent.
Place on top of that at least a short-term reduction in Latin
American market growth and slow but at least steady growth in
Africa, and the obvious question is, where is all the demand and
future aircraft growth coming from?
One of the few things that all the major aircraft manufacturers agree on is that Asia is where the future lies, and that is
certainly supported by our schedules analysis that reflects some
pretty significant absolute and share growths in the past five
years. But, Asia is a very large geographic region and certainly by
industry classifications, the largest. Sector lengths of over seven
hours and 3,000 miles are not unusual in a market where population density is actually quite low, driven partly by geography with
many nations struggling to develop their infrastructure quickly
enough to meet demand, and partly by market forces-the large
existing metro airports often having a dominant hub position.
For the longer haul sectors, certainly in the short term, it would
seem that there are more than enough market pairs and opportunities to satisfy new aircraft deliveries (alongside airlines retiring
a number of older generation aircraft), as well as absorbing some
outstanding air service agreement designations and exploiting
the operating benefits of next-generation aircraft such as the
B787. The two illustrations show the total summer 2013 and summer 2015 scheduled route operations for the aircraft type and,
specifically, the rapid expansion of services over just two years,
even allowing for the delayed deliveries of the aircraft.
In total, a staggering 728 new routes have been launched using
the B787 in the last two years; many of those are scheduled charter
operations with very low seasonal frequency which slightly distorts
the picture. Perhaps more revealing is the 'top 10' new routes that
have been launched which are listed on page 21.
As can be seen from the table, all of the top 10 routes are in
what are frequently referred to as emergent markets, and eight
of the top 10 include an Asian destination. Some are also either
new routes or are mature, established markets with new capacity

20 The official publication of the International Society of Transport Aircraft Trading
Jetrader - Summer 2015

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Jetrader - Summer 2015
