Boeing’s Market Forecast Echoes Gulf War

Boeing’s latest 20-year delivery forecast for 43.625 aircraft is almost identical to last year’s Commercial Market Outlook (CMO). It’s just 25 aircraft more compared to the 2025 edition. This tiny difference is explained by what Darren Hulst, Vice President of Commercial Marketing, refers to as “an echo” from the current Middle East war and related economic effects. In the Global Market Forecast (GMF) that Airbus released on July 8, the European airframer quantified the Gulf war effect to slow down air traffic/RPKs to 2.1 percent this year. On average, traffic would continue to grow by 3.9 percent per year through 2045. Boeing guides a linear baseline scenario of 4.0 percent growth per year. But it also includes a less optimistic scenario of 3.6 percent and a more optimistic one of 4.1 percent. Boeing’s CMO forecast of 43.625 aircraft (43.600 last year) is not fully comparable to Airbus's GMF of 42.060 new deliveries, as Boeing includes freighters and Airbus doesn’t. The Europeans will share their cargo update in October. Including aircraft that will remain in service, the world fleet will grow to over 50.000 aircraft in 2045. Replacement Let’s take a closer look. Boeing guides 22.150 aircraft are for growth. This is down from 22.500 in last year’s CMO and a further reduction from 23.410 aircraft in 2024. Demand for replacement is higher this year: 21.475 versus 21.100 last year and 20.565 in 2024. The growth scenario is almost identical to Airbus’ 22.240, but the Europeans are more conservative on replacement with 19.820. [caption id="attachment_195459" align="aligncenter" width="731"] Boeing CMO 2026-2045[/caption] In contrast, Boeing is slightly more conservative on narrowbody demand. The CMO guides 33.545 single-aisle aircraft, up from 33.285 last year but down from 33.920 mentioned by Airbus. Boeing separately mentions 1.435 regional aircraft (1.545 last year), which Airbus doesn’t include. Demand for widebodies stands at 7.715 aircraft, compared to 7.815 in 2025. Airbus is much more bullish, with 8.140 passenger widebody aircraft. Freighters Boeing guides demand for 935 new full freighters compared to 955 last year, as e-commerce and freight continue to grow. Unless the bubble bursts, air transport of AI goods like semiconductors will continue to grow, with 70 percent of all goods carried by aircraft last year. Three-quarters of all air cargo is carried on large full freighters like the 777F and 747-400F/8F. Hulst said the slightly lower demand for new freighters reflects a shift towards large converted freighters like the 777-300ERSF, which recently has picked up delivery momentum. As mentioned, Airbus doesn’t include freighters in the GMF, but the October 2025 cargo outlook guided 935 aircraft. Identical to Boeing, then. In the presentation Hulst shared this week, he only specified demand per region in percentages. We have to wait for the complete document and Excel sheet to see the full numbers. In Boeing’s view, China will take the biggest slice of the cake at 21 percent, followed by Eurasia at 20 percent. Next are South East Asia and North America at 19 percent each, the Middle East and Africa at 10 percent, Oceania and North Asia at 5 percent, and Latin America at 6 percent. Observations Darren Hulst started his CMO presentation by outlining a few general trends and observations of the airline business. Like his colleagues at Airbus, Boeing sees that the fundamentals of air travel remain solid. “Our outlook remains strong, and our view is very steady relative to last year. In fact, there is less than one percent change.” Last year, global passenger growth averaged 3.4 percent, but it happened in Asia and Europe, whereas North America shrank by one percent. Growth continued to 6.0 percent in the first two months until hostilities in the Middle East broke out. This will impact GDP growth by more than 0.5 percent and potentially more. This will have a “pretty material impact on air travel, at least throughout the first half of 2026 and full-year growth to be cut by about half.” Higher fuel costs and operational constraints are the main reasons. [caption id="attachment_195460" align="aligncenter" width="742"] Boeing 787-9 Riyadh Air Paris Airshow 2025[/caption] This is the ‘echo' that resonates in the 2026-2045 CMO, although markets have shown resilience. For instance, air cargo quickly rebounded to an average 6.0 percent growth from April to June. Long-term, commerce, tourism and VFR traffic will spur air travel, especially as the world's middle class will grow by another 500 million households who will be able to travel. Hulst confirmed that revenues from non-Economy traffic have reached almost half of all revenues. Premium cabins make up almost 20 percent of that, while ancillary revenues have almost quadrupled over the past ten years, even as traffic itself grew by just 40 percent. Speaking of the supply chain, Hulst noted that aircraft deliveries are some 350 below what the market would require. “While last year was better and deliveries were 25 percent above 2024 levels, we were still 250 aircraft below the level of deliveries we saw in 2018. If you combine that shortfall with the fact that the market is 10 percent larger than it was in 2018, the net shortfall last year was around 350 aircraft.” Hulst expects that the undersupply for widebodies will persist for another five to seven years. The problem is much bigger with narrowbodies, but the situation will improve as production rates increase. Boeing eventually wants to grow MAX deliveries to 63 per month, while Airbus targets 75 A320neo family deliveries per month by late 2027. Agnostic Like Joost van der Heijden at Airbus, Darren Hulst stated that the CMO is aircraft agnostic and doesn’t eye specific types and technologies. But he outlined some key benefits from the current Boeing portfolio. The medium-sized MAX 8 and 9 have a 62 percent of airline fleets, but have an 80 percent share of the networks they serve. Demand for larger variants (MAX 10) will grow, but it is about the versatility of the family, with the smaller MAX 7 at the other end. According to Hulst, the MAX is more productive than the A320neo family. It is available for service 30 days more per year, has a 16-minute higher utilisation, and flies 150 kilometres further on an average trip. He didn’t elaborate whether the higher availability is a direct result of the high number of A320neo family groundings due to Pratt & Whitney GTF issues. Medium-sized widebodies like the 787 comprise 59 percent of long-haul fleets but operate 71 percent of the network. Since it entered service in 2011, the Dreamliner has opened up 550 new routes in 1.300 markets. On over 600 routes, airlines operate more than one variant of the 787. The large widebody 777 operates on most of the top-200 city pairs, which represent less than one percent of all global routes but generate over 12 percent of all passenger revenues. “Seventy percent or more is flown by 777s.” The 777X will be the market flagship in this segment. AirInsight wanted to know if Boeing has already done market studies for a bigger 777X or the 777-10, for which Emirates pushed last November, but we didn’t get a reply.

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