Premium #164 – How the Passenger Airliner Market is Evolving

There is a lot of talk about how the market for commercial airlines has and continues to change. But to date, we have not seen analytical data that shows by just how much the market has changed over the last decade and a half. The following chart summarizes the number of aircraft in passenger service by seating capacity in the years 2000, 2007, and 2014. The seating segments are defined by AirInsight and based on typical seating by aircraft types to ensure a close comparison for competing types.

One would expect to see the 2014 fleet size to exceed the earlier years by a good margin, given that traffic doubles every 15 years or so, and it indeed has grown significantly. The number of aircraft grew remarkably in the 141-170 seats category, but shrunk in some others. In this article, we will focus on the narrow-body aircraft segment, from 91 up to 200 seats.