The air-cargo market is important to Boeing, which has supplied over 90% of the world's dedicated air-cargo capacity, both for express cargo and for industrial goods. Its products include the 767-300, 777 and 747-8 freighter aircraft, and the 737BCF and 767-300BCF conversion freighters.
"The air cargo market has faced several years of below trend growth," stated Randy Tinseth, v.p. - Marketing. "As trade continues to recover, we're confident the air cargo market will see growth over the long-term."
Sustaining that growth will be two primary factors: the expansion of e-commerce, which Boeing projects will expand to a $3.6-trillion market by 2020; and the ongoing development of China’s express-delivery service sector, which is set to grow by 55% in volume and 39% in revenue by 2020.
In general, the OEM finds that market segments linked to the Asian regional economies will see faster average growth in air-cargo volumes than other regional markets. However, the express carriers still will trail dedicated freighters in cargo volumes: the latter will represent more than half of all air-cargo traffic over the 20-year period, and will continue to provide the majority of cargo capacity.
The global fleet comprising this market segment is seen expanding by 70% by 2035, with a total of 2,370 new freighter aircraft coming into service. Boeing sees demand for 550 new, large freighter jets and 380 new, medium wide-body freighters. Additionally, there will be demand for 400 wide-body jets converted to cargo aircraft, and 1,040 converted medium wide-body jets.
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